I'm in the middle of reading Mere Christianity for the first time and am greatly enjoying it. I especially appreciated what Lewis said about Pride, Christian Love and Hope.

I always loved how Lewis was able to put sometimes complex ideas (which are rife in theology especially) into layman's terms for non-experts like myself, and the above quote puts Christ's first arrival in a new light and in such a way as people may have never thought of it that way before .

That's one thing I loved both about Tolkien and Lewis. A lot of their amazing deep thoughts go right over my head, but they can explain some of them in such a way that you "get it". I don't know, it's hard to explain, but it's really great.

I've only read Out of the Silent Planet, and am in the middle of Perelandra. I really liked OotSP, especially the hross's (I'm pretty sure that's how it was spelled) It was a great book, not really one I tore through to know what happened, but more savored because of all the amazing quotes and thoughts.

And Perelandra...it's good (well, I understood the beginning, and that was good) but very very deep, and, well, right now I'm just confused

I'm ashamed to say I've only read Mere Christianity besides the Narnia series...I must read more. On my list is Till We Have Faces, The Great Divorce, Suprise by Joy, The Four Loves, The Pilgrim's Regress, The Screwtape Letters, and all the rest of his books, but those ones are at the top of my list

Hurray!
I've read:
Till We Have Faces Superb in every way. I read it after studying Cupid and Psyche in Latin class so I already knew the tale behind it.
Out of the Silent Planet, Perlandra, and That Hideous Strength THS was my favorite of the three.
The Screwtape Letters It was fascinating.
Letters to Children I really liked this one, especially the letters where he writes to the children a lot.
The Great Divorce
And half of Pilgrim's Regress it was too deep for me. It was even harder to read than Silmarillion.

I had to read the Space Trilogy Books twice to understand them. Lewis puts alot of complex ideas into not-so-much space. Or maybe it's just that they're complex and I'm a fast reader, so I skidded past the ideas the first time around. Hmm. I don't know.

My favorite non-fiction was Surprised By Joy, but I suppose that's a bit ridiculous to say because I've read only that book of his non-fiction.

I read Till We Have Faces and was confused, and also disliked the ending. I didn't really like that book in general. Maybe if I read it again I'll see it differently, but I don't know. The Screwtape Letters was an obligatory read for me for school, and I liked it very much. It was very interesting to read the advice of Screwtape to Wormwood and then think of how the different sins he encouraged are present in my life. So weird.

I've never heard of The Pilgrim's Regress. Hmm.

I started to read The Pilgrim's Regress, but I never finished it.....I will have to get back to it!

The Space Trilogy--especially That Hideous Strength--rank highly among my favotite books of all time.

I want to encourage everyone on here to read as many C.S. Lewis books as you can in your lifetime! I've read pretty much all of them (but then I'm older than most of you ), including his complete letters (now that is a bit extreme, but was fascinating), and I have been blown away by his wisdom and insights. Mere Christianity is the absolute classic, and Narnia fans will recognize some of the thought processes and ideas in that book that he also uses in the Narnia stories. That's really true about all of his non-fiction work. And he really is clear and down-to-earth in his writing style.

If you want to branch off of Narnia, maybe start with his other fiction: Screwtape, Great Divorce, and the Space Trilogy. Til We Have Faces is something entirely different; it is set in ancient Greece, but it is also pretty cool. Pilgrim's Regress is PRETTY DEEP; you're better off reading his autobiography Surprised by Joy before you read that. It's full of references to early 20th century thought and literature that is not all that recognizable today. But don't shy away from his non-fiction: Problem of Pain, Abolition of Man (you'll recognize Jill and Eustace's school in this one), Reflection on the Psalms, and Miracles are all great. You can't go wrong anywhere! (Except some of his early poetry--he was pretty bitter back then, and very mad at the God that he said he didn't believe in!)

What non-Narnian Lewis writings have I read?

NON-FICTION
Mere Christianity, which I loved for all the reasons Shadowlander and greenleaf23 gave

Surprised by Joy, an excellent autobiography

A Grief Observed ... which I found very sad and poignant

I mentioned earlier that I'd read parts of A Discarded Image, but I'm thinking now it was English Renaissance in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama. Lewis's thoughts on Spenser and Marlowe were certainly interesting.

For my diss, I read Lewis's essay "Kipling's World," which appeared in his collection They Asked for a Paper (1963). Here are some of his thoughts on Rudyard Kipling. "He is eminently a moralist; in almost every story we are invited, nay forced, to admire and condemn. ... He has a reverent Pagan agnosticism about all ultimates." Lewis says Kipling also has pagan tolerance "extend[ing] even to Christianity, whose phraseology he freely uses for rhetorical effect." What Lewis is most known for in Kipling criticism is calling him "first and foremost the poet of work." But Kipling can’t reassure readers "that the work is really worthy of all the human sacrifices it demands." Lewis accuses Kipling in his work that "to belong, to be inside, to be in the know, to be snugly together against the outsiders – that is what really matters; it is almost an accident who are cast for the role of outsiders." What are those "inside" groups Kipling likes? Mithraism and Freemasonry. [Source: "Kipling’s World." They Asked for a Paper. London, 1963. Rpt. in Kipling and the Critics. Ed. Elliot L. Gilbert. New York: New York UP, 1965. 99-117. 102, 109, 111, 114, 116.]

I discovered yesterday that a literary critic considered Aslan's sacrifice in LWW Mithraism rather than Christianity. And one thing Kipling referred to in many of his stories, and seemed to admire, was Mithraism. I think we all know by now that Lewis borrowed "Pevensie" [orig. "Pevensey"] and "Son of Adam / Daughter of Eve" in Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill.

Has anyone read The Abolition of Man? Someone told me it was a strange book, but I've heard it's Lewis's thoughts on modern British education. I'd really like to read it.

FICTION: just The Screwtape Letters, which confused me about what the devil really thinks of Christians and his ways of deceiving them, since he's a liar. Any suggestions for what other fiction I should read?

Other than CoN, I have read all of Lewis's Space Trilogy, of which my favorite is Perelandra because of its wonderful retelling of the , followed by Out of the Silent Planet then Hideous Strength (which is currently being loaned out).

220chrisTian: I recommend all three books of the Space Trilogy.

I own The Screwtape Letters but only read half of them in order to help me with an article about temptation. I also own The Four Loves, but have not been able to read it yet.