Taking Smart Pills

by Jeff Baldwin Asking an English major to name his favorite book is like asking a mountaineer to name his favorite mountain. Every mountain he has climbed is his favorite just as every good novel is the avid reader’s favorite. A book, like a mountain, is an adventure, with different perils, views, and climate. The best one is the one you’re working on right now. When people ask me to name my ten favorite books, my math falls apart.

I have about 18 books on my top ten list. It doesn’t seems fair to be limited to a list of ten or a hundred because there are so many good books out there (it’s just that they’re not always easy to find snowed under a mass of Goosebumps and Harlequin fill-in-the-blank romances.) To make things easier on myself, then, the following list is not a list of my ten favorite books. If you’ve been doing the assigned reading each issue, you’ve already read some of my favorite books. The ten books listed below are simply ten more books I think you should read in the next year.

Many of them are my favorites, but at least one (Walden Two by B.F. Skinner) isn’t even well-written. These are just ten interesting books that have a lot to do with the Christian worldview. If you don’t read these books, you won’t break my heart and your world won’t come to an end (although you will experience profound pangs of regret later in life).

Ignore this list completely if you like, but humor me in one basic way: keep reading! I know it sounds corny, and I wish I could think of another way to say it, but reading is like taking smart pills. Need more wisdom to make it in college? Pop a Tolkien pill in your brain! Want to understand politics a little better? Swallow a little Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk. Reading makes you smarter. I know, I know, people will tell you your smarts were determined from day one by your genes and there’s nothing more you can do. These people need to think again.

Reading not only enhances your vocabulary and informs you, it also conveys accumulated wisdom and encourages habits of good communication. If you haven’t experienced it yet, you soon will: read C.S. Lewis enough and one day you’ll catch yourself thinking through a problem with Lewis-like clarity! Don’t tell me you read too slowly and don’t tell me all the good books are over your head. The rate at which you read doesn’t matter, and there are plenty of great books with real wisdom you can comprehend right now (James Herriot’s veterinarian stories, for example).

There is, of course, one corollary to the “smart pill” rule: Incredible Hulk comic books don’t count. When I say “reading makes you smarter,” I mean “reading worthwhile books makes you smarter.” The Hulk probably just makes you grunt more and break things. That said, it’s time to get on with the list. I’ve arranged the books in the order in which I would recommend reading them, but of course that’s only a suggestion.

The bottom line: read so much that your parents start to worry about you. 1. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Everyone says this is a monster story, but it’s not. It’s the story of every man. You will find no bogeymen or godzillas in this book, just a person like every son or daughter of Adam a sinful creature desperately in need of a Savior. Jekyll and Hyde are in each of us, and there are only two possible endings for Hyde: either he dies on the cross with Christ, or he kills us. I don’t know if Stevenson was a Christian or not, but I know this book accurately describes the nature of man according to the Christian worldview.

2. The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton. Seems like just a fun mystery book, but you should always expect more from Chesterton.

His mysteries always border on the mystical and always provide unexpected insights into the tension between Christianity and rival worldviews. This book contains one of my all-time favorite lines, spoken by a judge in his court to the Prime Minister of England: “Get a new soul. That thing’s not fit for a dog. Get a new soul.” 3.

Phantastes by George MacDonald. A kind of grown-up fairy tale, Phantastes puts us in a make-believe world to renew our sense of wonder at the incredible everyday world in which we live. In an odd way, we find ourselves glad to be reminded that our life is a strenuous adventure because we are also reassured that God brings all things together for good. C.S.

Lewis said that this one book changed his whole outlook. I’d say that’s a pretty good recommendation. 4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Yes, Twain was passionately anti-Christian, and yes, Huck Finn has a streak of rebellion.

But this book does what Phantastes does, only in a much more difficult setting: it reminds us of the wonder of God’s creation. While fairy tales have the benefit of inventing extraordinary people and places to excite our imagination, Twain uses nothing more than two typical boys and a big, dull, muddy river that really lolls through the Midwest to remind us that nothing not sunrises, not rafts, not people should be taken for granted. Every time I see the Mississippi I look for the wonder in it, and whenever I catch a glimpse I know it’s because of Tom and Huck. 5. The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers.

This has been called the most literate mystery since Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Sayers was a Christian contemporary of C.S. Lewis who had some unsound ideas about feminism but also some terrific insight on classical education and creativity. Her mysteries feature an unlikely detective named Peter Wimsey, a man who uses a lot of references that sail right over my head but makes up for it by being quick-witted and strangely humble.

Read this book patiently it’s not just about whodunit, it’s also about human nature. 6. Walden Two by B.F. Skinner.

It’s strange, I know, to recommend a book by an atheist that’s not even well-written but this book goes a long way toward revealing the fundamental bankruptcy of atheism. Skinner tries to imagine utopia - a perfect community developed by a very smart man who understands how to manipulate people using the laws of human behavior (Skinner believed people’s actions are determined by their environment; Christians obviously don’t). As you read, compare this sterile, subhuman “paradise” with the real paradise, and you’ll be reminded of just how much of reality atheists choose to ignore. The highlight comes near the end of the novel, when the community’s architect begins to compare himself to Christ. 7.

The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis. Okay, I cheated here and snuck in three books for the price of one. But to read Out of the Silent Planet is to become so hooked that you must read Perelandra and That Hideous Strength as well.

My personal favorite is the last one, which is a futuristic novel that does a great job of exposing the arrogance of atheistic scientists. Obviously, anything by Lewis is knockout. 8. Hard Times by Charles Dickens. With Dickens, you either love him or you hate him.

I know, because I’ve been on both sides of the fence: in college I couldn’t imagine why my teachers kept raving about this rambling, extraneous-character-inventing windbag, and now I hang on his every word. And I’m convinced that I could have skipped the “hating Dickens” stage if I had begun with this book. Shorter and more to the point, Hard Times is classic Dickens in an easy-to-digest capsule. 9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

My favorite novel, hands down. I’m a sucker for heroes, and this book features the most heroic representative of Christian ethics that I’ve ever encountered: Atticus Finch. He’s honest, just, a good parent, and he really does turn the other cheek. And what makes him so compelling is that I suspect he’s real: Lee won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for this book and yet she has never published another book which encourages me to conclude that she didn’t make up this story, but rather re-told it after growing up the daughter of a real-life Finch. 10.

Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy. I couldn’t leave you without recommending at least one interminable Russian novel. Yes, Anna Karenin is a ridiculously long story, but if you can forget the density of the book you’ll be dumbfounded by it. No other novel spells out so painstakingly the very real consequences of sin. It’s the rare book that can face sin without glorifying or sugar-coating it; Tolstoy takes on this difficult task and flourishes.

Of course, there are countless other great books that should probably be on your reading list for this year too. It hurts me not to have mentioned Robinson Crusoe or The Picture of Dorian Gray , and I’ll probably wake up tomorrow slapping my forehead incredulously because I forgot to include another title. Luckily, there are plenty of other ways for you to find out about great books. Many Christian authors include booklists in an appendix in their books, and these are usually reliable. My two favorite booklists appear in William Kilpatrick’s excellent "Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong" and Gene Veith’s equally exceptional "Reading Between the Lines.

" Both these books are worth reading based on their own merits, and their booklists are an added bonus. All of which brings me to the end of my recommendation of the next ten books you should read, a recommendation based on my old hopeless math: if you look closely, you’ll find that I snuck 21 titles into this article. Read them all if you like, but please at least read. The big picture, of course, is to surrender your all to Jesus Christ, but as you consider the details within the big picture, please remember to take your smart pills. This article originally appeared in New Attitude Magazine.