I’ve always been interested in the affect that fiction can have on a person.  For myself, I’ve noticed that even within the realm of so-called Christian fiction, there are novels that I come away from desiring more and closer relationship with God, and novels that suck me away from anything but the world they have created.  The latter are often ones I love but not ones that I find particularly edifying.  It’s not that they are bad necessarily–sometimes a rest and removal is what we need in life–but just that they are not accomplishing a lot in me.  The former are also often ones I love, but the difference is that I come out of them truly charged and desiring more out of myself and my relationship with the divine.  That’s why I was excited to see an article talking about using fiction as a part of the discipleship process: Read it here.

As an example of fiction that for me energizes me for Christ and to doing his work in the world, I would recommend:

Almost anything by George MacDonald.  I recommend the edited versions by Michael Phillips unless you are like me and enjoy a large smattering of Scottish brogue in your reading (in which case you can find much of his work in Project Gutenberg).  I especially recommend his Curate’s Awakening (or Thomas Wingfold: Curate) and it’s sequels, and his The Baronet’s Song, or Sir Gibbie and its sequals.

Some (but not all) of the works of C. S. Lewis (specifically his Screwtape letters and Narnia books, while entertaining and enjoyable don’t give me that push toward the divine that say The Great Divorce or Surprised by Joy or The Four Loves do).  He’s a heretic in his theology by almost any Protestant standard, but if reading his books causes me to turn to the Bible to read more deeply, then maybe there’s a reason that he is considered one of the greatest of Christian theologians despite that.

And finally I’ll add the early works of Janette Oke.  Especially her Seasons of the Heart and Love Comes Softly series.  She knows how to beat a horse until it is utterly dead, and so as you get to the end of a series like the Love series, the quality and value drops off dramatically, but the early stuff…Gold.

There are probably more, but these come off the top of my head because they were so influential and important to me.