Despite being named Clives Staples Lewis, he apparently went by Jack. Must be an English thing.

Lewis is a writer who I have gone back to at various times in my life. As a child, naturally, I read the Narnia novels. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe being the first and best loved, of course (it has the most ‘magic,’ you might say – and the description of Lucy’s tea with Mr. Tumnus, with the sardines on buttered toast and a dozen other lush, tasty descriptions of the sorts of traditional English food that an American boy in a naval town had never heard of; still makes my mouth water). Though I gather it has a poor critical reputation, I always loved The Horse and His Boy. It’s a great book for a lonely boy who doesn’t feel quite at place in the world (am I Freudanizing myself? maybe, I don’t know – piss off). Also, the romance in that one is of a perfect level for a child who isn’t quite old enough or is only barely old enough to appreciate the opposite sex (or same sex, depending on orientation).

His science fiction books were never of great interest to me. The Christian apologetics never quite felt natural in Out of the Silent Planet, the only one I read (though as I think about it, I want to read it again, partly to trace its lineage back to A Princess of Mars).

My mother had a boxed set of some of his treatises and explicit apologetics: The Screwtape Letters (which I read several times in junior high), The Great Divorce (which I read once in junior high, but didn’t have the theological background to understand what he was driving at), Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and I think one other…

Later, as an adult, I read A Grief Observed, a naturally heartbreaking but comforting book (I was mourning a love affair, not a death, actually).

Basically, he’s got something for everybody.