Christian Goodreaders discussion

I hope it's okay that I started this thread. I was curious what authors you all love and would recommend to other readers? What genres?

For Non-Fiction:
My all time favorite Christian author is CS Lewis. I haven't finished reading Mere Christianity but I believe it is a wonderful book about Christianity that starts with a basic foundation and builds in an easy to understand way, but at the same time has a sophistication.

Max Lucado is very encouraging and entertaining to read.
Phillip Yancey's book Searching for the Invisible God was a wonderful help for me.

For fiction, I also loved Madeleine L'Engle in addition to CS Lewis.

C.S. Lewis is definitely at the top of my list for non-fiction and fiction. I've also read several of Max Lucado's books and thought highly of them.

It's been years since I read any novels by Madeleine L'Engle, but I loved them as a kid.

Lately, I've enjoyed George Bryan Polivka, Robert Don Hughes and to a lesser extent Wayne Thomas Batson.

Thanks for the recommendations, Jon. I appreciate them.

Danielle, it's not only "okay" that you started a thread (I wish more people would :-)), but it's a great topic! Hopefully it will spark a lot of response.

I've gotten a lot out of C. S. Lewis' nonfiction, and I really enjoy his fiction (as well as that of his fellow Inkling, Tolkien), too. Other Christian nonfiction that I'd rate really high includes Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Church (I haven't read his The Purpose-Driven Life), and Kenneth Scott Latourette's History of Christianity --I believe we can't understand the present without understanding the past. Because of my background in academic Biblical scholarship and other Christian studies, a lot of the Christian nonfiction I've read has been in those fields, and much of it is aimed at a scholary audience; but I can recommend some of those kinds of books if anyone is interested.

L'Engle is an excellent novelist; I really liked her A Wrinkle in Time, Love Letters, and The Other Side of the Sun. I haven't read much fiction published by Christian presses, because much of it is romance genre fiction, which I'm not really into; but two of my Goodreads friends are Christians who write excellent genre fiction --Andrew Seddon (historical and science fiction) and Sue Dent (supernatural fiction). A number of the older classic writers that I've enjoyed were also Christians who took their faith seriously: Austen, Hawthorne, Dickens, Scott, Cooper, Defoe, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, etc.

Great list of authors to investigate. I'm sorry I am just now participating. But I'll try to stay active on here. Thanks for the recommendations.

You're welcome, Danielle, and I hope you do stay active in this group --we can use more posts! If I'd had more time this morning, I could have shared some more recommendations. I'm so busy with VBS at my church this week that Goodreads is just getting a lick and a promise here and there, but hopefully things will be more normal by next week. :-)

Don't worry. I love to get book recommendations. I'll be back for more.

One inexcusable omission in my short list above was the great early 20th-century Norse novelist Sigrid Undset, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an adult convert to the Roman Catholic faith, who took her Christianity seriously and was as concerned about the spiritual development of her fictional characters and their relationship to God as she was about their human relationships. Her Kristen Lavransdatter trilogy and her four Master of Hestviken novels are real masterpieces of medieval historical fiction, which I can highly recommend!

I'll have to look into her. Thanks, Werner.

Yes, thanks for the recommendation. I need more books to read. :P

My favorite author that I KNOW is (or rather was) a Christian is J.R.R Tolkien.

Aquanetta, you've got a lot of fellow Tolkien fans in this group! (Including me.)

Tolkein is good. C.S. Lewis, Francis Chan, Charles Swindoll, Max Lucado.


As for fiction- I love Francine Rivers, Karen Kingsbury and Brock and Bodie Thoene. Michael Phillips is good too. Julie Klassen is really great if you like Regency era novels. She's fairly new and Has three books out.

Werner wrote: "Auuanetta, you've got a lot of fellow Tolkien fans in this group! (Including me.)"

Count me in on that group as well. :-) I read the Hobbit and LOTR once a year in fall (just in time to celebrate Frodo's & Bilbo's birthdays).

I want to add to the Regency Era list--Linore Rose Burkard (whom I believe is a Goodreads author). I always loved reading the secular historical romance novels set in that time period (particularly those by Judith McNaught). I can't read those novels any more and didn't think I'd be able to find other CF writers of that genre. Wrong! Everything I love about Judith McNaught's stories--the intrigue, description of Society, being drawn into the story emotionally--I can find in Ms. Burkard's Regency novels--without all the language and sex!

I also didn't think I'd enjoy pirate novels, but I really enjoyed Mary Lu Tyndall's two pirate series. Avast me hearties! ;-)

Happy reading!

Ted Dekker
Francine Rivers
C.S. Lewis
Jan Karon(my favorites)
I am excited to read some of these authors i have never heard of that everyone has listed here.

Denise wrote: "Ted Dekker
Francine Rivers
C.S. Lewis
Jan Karon(my favorites)
I am excited to read some of these authors i have never heard of that everyone has listed here."

I absolutely *LOVE& Jan Karon's Mitford series! I usually end up reading it once a year and have all the books that are currently available for Kindle on my device (for some reason, "These High, Green Hills" and "A New Song" are unavailable for Kindle in the US).

I can't wait until her new Father Tim book comes out in October.

A few of my other fiction favorites that I don't see listed yet are:

Bodie and Brock Thoene
Jeanette Windle
& Linda Chaikin's earlier works.

My favorite Christian novel, to date, is Island of the World by Michael O’Brien. It is the story of a Croatian boy during the Balkans War. I haven’t read any of his other books yet.

My favorite Christian author is Jane Austin, although I don’t count her books as Christian fiction. My favorite Christian-fiction authors are Francine Rivers (especially the Mark of the Lion series) and C. S. Lewis.

Jane Austen was the daughter of an Anglican curate, and the sister of two others; she was, apparently, a practicing communicant of the Anglican church all of her life. Her extant letters, and the written records of her by people who knew her, testify to a genuine personal piety, a consistent practice of prayer (she composed some written prayers, which still exist), and to a faith in Christ as her savior, the last theme expressed most explicitly in writings and statements dating from the last years of her life. Christopher Gillie, in A Preface to Jane Austen, concludes that "her faith was positive and important to her, but inclined to be conservative (if we can think of evangelicalism as "progressive") and reticent...." He also argues that "Mansfield Park is fundamentally a religious novel."

As I noted in a post above, (Jane) Austen is most certainly one of my favorite Christian authors!

Michy, I don't have any problem with anyone who doesn't share my literary tastes --a LOT of things I read aren't everybody else's cup of tea. God didn't cut us all out of dough with a standardized cookie cutter; He created us as unique individuals, and revels in our uniqueness! So if you don't like some writer that I like (or vice versa), that's as normal as having different tastes in foods, or music.

On the separate question of which writers were or weren't Christians, I think some modern American evangelicals (not necessarily you personally) tend to fall into a trap of viewing Christian faith in terms of extreme historical discontinuity: that is to say, they admit that Christ inaugurated the Church back in the first century A.D.; but they would say it quickly fell into total apostasy, so that, for practically all of the intervening centuries, true Christianity was virtually nonexistent, and the professed believers of those times are no part of God's family. (One of my BC colleagues tells me that an administrator at the college where she formerly served seriously asserts, on that basis, that Augustine, Luther and Calvin are all in hell, because none of them were "Christians!") Only with the 18th or 19th century revivals, or perhaps the rise of dispensational premillenialism, or the founding of some particular denomination, was true Christianity gloriously restored to recognizable continuity. IMO, this is a seriously distorted and impoverished view of Christian history.

In the words of a church historian whom I was privileged to hear speak in my undergraduate days, "Wherever men and women confess themselves to be redeemed by Jesus Christ, there the Church is." To be sure, you and I can agree that being a true follower of Christ demands more than having been a passive recipient of infant baptism, or being nominally carried on the rolls of a state Church. (Large numbers of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Calvinists, including many of those born before 1700, would join us in agreeing with that.) And certainly hypocrisy was a real phenomenon in past centuries --and still is. Only God can truly say infallibly whether someone else is a Christian, be she a Jane Austen or a Lynne Austen. But for human purposes, we can really only go by the verbal and life evidences of a personally embraced Christian faith. Where those are present, I'm willing to say, "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck --even if it may be a duck whose creedal details and church practices don't closely resemble mine." :-)

@Werner: Well said!

My favorite Christian authors are Francine Rivers(especially the Mark of the Lion Trilogy and Redeeming Love), Terri Blackstock, and Ted Dekker.

There are some great recommendations here! I might have to try Jane Austen. My 13 year old daughter read Pride and Prejudice and loved it.

Paula wrote: "I might have to try Jane Austen."

I tried listening to Pride and Prejudice a few years ago, and fizzled out about halfway through (might fault, not Jane's). Last year I successfully read Jane Eyre as a challenge before reading the first Thursday Next novel. I absolutely loved Jane Eyre - so much that I requested and watched the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries from Netflix to watch the next weekend. This summer I plan to read Mansfield Park as part of the K.C. Library's summer reading challenge on Victorian literature. I'm looking forward to it.

I read Jane Eyre last year, and I absolutely loved it. I tried to read Emma and Persuasion, but I didn't get very far. But, I haven't given up on Austen yet.

I'm reading Jane Eyre for the first time right now. I've seen the most recent film adaptations and loved them so I decided to give it a try. So far I'm loving it and I've been amazed at how acurately the recent adaptations have been. I'm not sure where the author was spiritually but the book definitely has a strong biblical message throughout.

I loved the intensity of Jane Eyre. She was a great character. You saw her suffer so much, but she just got stronger. Great stuff.

Like Austen, Jane Eyre author Charlotte Bronte was another Anglican curate's daughter, raised in the Church of England. I don't know whether she continued that affiliation as an adult (though I assume she did) and her theology was less orthodox and conservative than Austen's; on the evidence of her own writings, she believed in the automatic universal effect of Christ's atonement. But she most definitely considered herself a Christian, and took her faith quite seriously. She touches on religious themes quite openly in Jane Eyre, and her moral messages there, as Zette noted, are biblical.

Lynnette wrote: "A few of my other fiction favorites that I don't see listed yet are:

Bodie and Brock Thoene
Jeanette Windle
& Linda Chaikin's earlier works."

I love Linda's Silk House (or whatever it's called) series set in France. I haven't read her other books, though.

I love this thread. There are some gems here I have not looked into yet.

Regards,
John Michael Hileman

Rumer Godden wrote a superb, faith filled novel called "In This House of Brede". It takes place in a Roman Catholic Abbey in England--but I want to emphasize it is not just a book for Roman Catholics.

I really want to emphasize that. As soon as people hear what it is about, I get, "Well..." But you do not need to be French to enjoy Les Miserables or English to enjoy Shakespeare--the STORY will appeal to many.

At 42 years of age, rich, successful Philippa Talbot gives up her career in government to become a novice at Brede Abbey. It is a tale of growth and faith as she enters a completely new world where prayer, not money, is important.

There a some amsing pats such as the old sister who commented she'd done an act of charity "in such an ugly manner as I'll not be soon asked to do another. Or another well born novice being instructed ("Sister Hilary, have you NEVER cleaned a saucepan before!?)

But there are lots of uplifting, faith filled moments. When Dame Catherine Ismay is selected to become the next Abbess of the Abbey, she flees to the chapel, dropping to her knees before the cross and cries "I can't". She prays and thinks as Rumer Godden gives us a bit of her history and the scene ends: "I can't " she whispered--but it was acceptance now---"so You must".

There are many other scenes of these women growing and laerning in faith, and a very well told tale. Try this book. I've read it at least six times. You will learn something and I think most of you would like it.

I haven't read any christian "stories" in a long time. Seems like whenever I go to the bible bookstore it's always for a devotion or a bible study book. I need to get back into some good fiction! I did like Frank Paretti. There were alot of other fictional books that I liked back then too but not from same authors and to tell you the truth I cannot remember their names (or the book titles, it's been THAT long). But I do like James Dobson, Stormie Omartian, Bruce Wilkinson had a good marriage study... LOVE C.S. Lewis and Corrie TenBoom!

Diane, our group is as much concerned with nonfiction books as with fiction, so your favorites are right on! (I love Lewis and TenBoom, too!)

I have the perfect book for you. It's a romance called 'A Love Song for Bethany' Visit the website alovesongforbethany.com to read excerpts. I know you will enjoy this book.

Let's see here:
Tolkien
C.S. Lewis
Bryan Davis
Donita K. Paul
Wayne Thomas Batson
These are all Fiction

Donita k Paul will be doing a book giveaway and an interview on our blog, shortly. Stop by and check it out.

Christian-fiction-book-reviews.com

So far, Sherri L. Lewis and Karen Kingsbury.

Tia wrote: "So far, Sherri L. Lewis and Karen Kingsbury."

I'm a kingsbury fan too!

Trish wrote: "I read Jane Eyre not too long ago. I was surprised how much I loved it- I was also surprised by how racy I thought it was for it's time (not that I've read many books from that era.) ..."

There's a reason she has the "sweet properness" to her books. If you really read it, she's making some political statements at the time and pushing boundries in a round about way. If you read anything on her you can understand why Austen wrote the way she did. I love her! Wrote a paper on her my Sophomore year in college.

Jennifer, I wish I could have read that paper! It sounds interesting.

I'm sure I have it somewhere...just finding it is the problem! lol

Not sure if this is the right place to post this question but.....I was just wondering if anyone knows anything about Lori Wick. She has been one of my favorite Christian authors and was releasing about a book each year but now it has been probably about 3 years since her last release. I was curious to see if anyone knows what is going on with her.

Zette, her publisher is Harvest House; they have a brief page about her, but it doesn't indicate anything out of the ordinary going on. Neither does her entry in Wikipedia (although that is very scanty anyway, and has no documentation at all). Sorry my search wasn't very helpful! (She doesn't have an entry in the Gale Literature Resource Center database, apparently --which is surprising!)

Zette wrote: "Not sure if this is the right place to post this question but.....I was just wondering if anyone knows anything about Lori Wick. She has been one of my favorite Christian authors and was releasing..."

She's had a book that was supposed to come out this year, but they pushed the date back I believe. They have been republishing her older ones, so i think that is why we haven't seen any new ones.

Thanks guys! I'll keep watching for a new release :0)

My favorite Christian authors (besides the authors I know personally): Janette Oke, for her sweet simplicity; Davis Bunn, for his being an "extraordinarily creative wordsmith"; and C.S. Lewis, for his ability to capture and hold the attention of varied audiences.

My Favorite Author is Hank Hanegraaf ;)

Werner wrote: "One inexcusable omission in my short list above was the great early 20th-century Norse novelist Sigrid Undset, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an adult convert to the Roman Catholic..."

I'm coming very late to this discussion, but I wanted to thank you for mentioning Undset. I'd never heard of her before and her work looks intriguing. I put the first book of her Kristen Lavransdatter trilogy on my to-read shelf.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did, Karin!

Ok a couple of names that I have not noticed on anyone's list (or maybe I missed them from a casual scan of past post)

Stephen R. Lawhead. I've read several of his books, but Byzantium is still my favorite.

Athol Dickson. The Cure is my favorite.

Banner, I haven't read anything by Dickson yet, but Lawhead is one of my favorite authors, too! I even belong to the Lawhead fan group here on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/3... .