What to Read Besides the Lord of the Rings

Here's what I want to know: When did the Lord of the Rings become the official favourite book of American Christians?

Seriously: When a book is mentioned in a sermon, or in another book, or when an evangelical shares their favourite book title, it's nearly always the Lord of the Rings. If it's not the Lord of the Rings, it's the Chronicles of Narnia. 

And this bothers me.

Look, I love the Lord of the Rings as much as the next person. That trilogy was what pulled me out of the Christian romance novels I loved as a teen (my mom called them "marshmallow" fiction) towards meatier stuff.

Marshmallow fiction.
This stuff will rot your mind.

But seriously, do we read anything else? Is there nothing else on our bookshelf?

From the way we talk about Lewis and Tolkien, one could imagine we read their novels in an endless, alternating cycle, switching back and forth and back and forth between the worlds of Narnia and Middle Earth.

It's time to break the cycle.

When I was a child, I was bemused by a particular habit of my father's: Whenever we went to an ice cream shop, no matter what flavours were available, he ordered chocolate almond. Always chocolate almond. 

As an adult, I've come to understand this; I regularly order Mackinac Island Fudge at my local ice cream shop. But I do this recognizing that when I order always the same flavor of ice cream, I miss out on other excellent flavors.

And when we read the same books, or the same kind of books, we miss out on other excellent stories. And Story is a terrible thing to miss out on.

Partly this is true for the same reason it's a terrible thing for a child to never eat her veggies. Take beets for example: If you never eat beets, you'll never discover (as I recently did) that you actually like them. If you never try new books, you'll deprive yourself of deep new pleasures.

And partly it's true because stories are good for us, not like medicine is good for us but like fresh air is good for us. Like fresh, cold air, a good book breathes new life into our world. In its pages we meet new people, see truth in a new way, exercise our imagination and our intellect in a new way. If we never read new books, however good the old books are that we read, the air in our mind will grow stale.

So if you love Narnia or Middle Earth, great! But there are other worlds out there to love, other books which can be equally delightful, equally refreshing to our mind and soul.

Here are my suggestions on how to find them:

One place to start is reading other books by authors you already enjoy.

This works particularly well with Lewis: Most people have read the Narnia books, the Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity. Fewer people have read The Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces, and Out of the Silent Planet. His essays are also worthwhile: I recommend the literary collection, Of Stories, and his thoughts on the Psalms.

Alan Jacobs suggests finding new favorite books by "reading backwards," by which he means reading the books which inspired the writers you already enjoy. 

If you like Tolkien, this may mean reading Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which shaped Tolkien's writing.

If you like Lewis, this means reading George MacDonald's fantasy novels, particularly The Princess and the Goblin, which is practically the template for Narnia, but also Lilith and Phantastes.

It means reading Dante's Divine Comedy, which shaped Lewis's theology and writing, especially The Great Divorce (I recommend the Esolen translation, which is one of the most accessible copies around, with its thoughtful footnotes.)

It means reading early science fiction novels, which Lewis just plain loved. Here I recommend H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, remarkable for the sense of Otherness which Wells builds around his aliens. I personally enjoyed A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs - hardly high literature, but fascinating as one of the earliest examples of the science fiction genre.

Of course, Lewis was not inspired only by science fiction and fantasy novels. Anthony Trollope was one of Lewis's favourite novelists; I've enjoyed Can You Forgive Her? and Barchester Towers, both long, well-characterized and thoughtful British novels after the fashion of Jane Austen. G.K. Chesterton was one of Lewis's favourite essayists; Orthodoxy and Heretics are particularly worthwhile.

Another trick is to look for writers who were connected with the writers you already enjoy.

Here I'd recommend Dorothy Sayers, who was a sometime participant in the Inklings. Her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries are classics; start Whose Body?, and go from there.
with the first,

On a similar note, you can try reading around in the same genre as the books you love.

If you like science fiction, A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller, is worth a try; the novel, set after a nuclear holocaust, explores the tensions between knowledge and faith. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip Dick, is an equally thoughtful exploration of faith and reality. I like Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow; though not as much "high literature" as some of these other recommendations, it's a good first-contact novel and thought-provoking.

If you prefer fantasy, try the Redwall series, by Brian Jacques. It's essentially Narnia, loaded with feasting and fighting, but with all animals. You can start anywhere in the series, though I'd recommend something like Marlfox or Mossflower to get underway. Try Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, in which Sophie (the oldest of three girls) is turned into an old woman by a witch and has to seek the help of the devious Wizard Howl; it's not a thought-provoking book, but a delightful and hilarious one.

Seek out recommendations. 

People are always sending me book lists.

Relevant magazine's list of novels that "will shape your theology" was sent to me by my boss. The one off this list I recommend is Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Her main character, pastor John Ames, is a gentle and thoughtful model of faith, positive in a way that few people of faith are in modern fiction. One of my colleagues, an elderly theology teacher, also enjoys Robinson's novels; we meet in the library or the copy room and swap notes on whichever Robinson novel we're reading currently.

A few years back, a friend of mine pointed out The Gospel Coalition's list of books every Christian should read. I'm currently working through Wendell Berry's A Place on Earth; Berry's more famous Jayber Crow is on the suggested book list.

You can, of course, simply ask friends for recommendations. Curious what my fellow believers read besides the Lord of the Rings, I asked on Facebook. Ironically, one suggested Lord of the Rings; when pressed, he admitted that suggesting Tolkien's epic was rather like saying one's favourite book was the Bible. Besides Lord of the Rings, here's a sampling of what was on the list:

• Adam Bede, George Eliot 
• The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene. 
• The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
• Dickens, especially Bleak House

Among these, The Power and the Glory is among my personal favorites. I haven't read Adam Bede, but Eliot's Middlemarch was well worth it. 

Alan Jacobs, in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, urges his readers to "read at whim", by which he means to read chiefly what is pleasurable, not what other people tell you to read. So take my recommendations with a grain of salt: This is what I enjoy, not necessarily what you will enjoy.

But I would encourage you to take someone's recommendation, whether mine or your friend's or the recommendation of one of your favourite authors, and read something that is not set in Narnia or Middle Earth. 

Clear the cobwebs out of your head. You might just discover you like all that fresh air!