The Silmarillion✦
The creation account at the front is the load-bearing part. Read it loosely; do not try to hold the names.
What the season is made of
The Canon
Not a syllabus. A shelf. Most of it is already in your house, and the season is built so that owning none of it is not a reason to skip a year.
If you only do 8 things
The Silmarillion
J.R.R. Tolkien — The creation account at the front is the load-bearing part. Read it loosely; do not try to hold the names.
On Fairy-Stories
J.R.R. Tolkien — The essay where sub-creation and eucatastrophe get their names. An hour, and the whole season sits on it.
Leaf by Niggle
J.R.R. Tolkien — Twenty pages about a man who never finishes his painting. Read it in one sitting, twice.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis — For the bookshelf in Tumnus's cave, and for reading aloud to whoever is small in your house.
Myth Became Fact
C.S. Lewis — Six pages in God in the Dock. The clearest statement of the claim this season is built on.
Orthodoxy
G.K. Chesterton — Read The Ethics of Elfland on its own if the whole book is too much. Monotony as vitality, not exhaustion.
The Supper of the Lamb
Robert Farrar Capon — A cookbook by an Anglican priest, and an hour spent looking at one onion. The thesis of the season, in a kitchen.
Planet Earth
BBC — On the same shelf as the mythology, on purpose. One episode makes the argument better than a paragraph.
The Legendarium
Tolkien himself. Start wherever you already are.
The Lord of the Rings
If you only reread one chapter, make it The Scouring of the Shire — the one the films cut.
On Fairy-Stories✦
The essay where sub-creation and eucatastrophe get their names. An hour, and the whole season sits on it.
Leaf by Niggle✦
Twenty pages about a man who never finishes his painting. Read it in one sitting, twice.
Mythopoeia
The poem written for Lewis after the argument on Addison's Walk. "We make still by the law in which we're made."
Lewis
The other half of the conversation.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe✦
For the bookshelf in Tumnus's cave, and for reading aloud to whoever is small in your house.
Myth Became Fact✦
Six pages in God in the Dock. The clearest statement of the claim this season is built on.
The Weight of Glory
The sermon on longing, mud pies, and the holiday at the sea.
The Faun's Bookshelf
A whole book on why myth matters, hung on the titles Lewis put on Tumnus's shelf.
The Third Chair
Chesterton and Capon — the two who keep this from becoming an academic exercise.
Orthodoxy✦
Read The Ethics of Elfland on its own if the whole book is too much. Monotony as vitality, not exhaustion.
The Everlasting Man
The book that argued Lewis most of the way there before Tolkien finished the job.
The Supper of the Lamb✦
A cookbook by an Anglican priest, and an hour spent looking at one onion. The thesis of the season, in a kitchen.
Watching
Three film nights, spaced a week apart, plus the created order itself.
The Lord of the Rings
Days 7, 14 and 21 — a week between each so the season carries them, not the other way round.
Planet Earth✦
On the same shelf as the mythology, on purpose. One episode makes the argument better than a paragraph.
The Hobbit
Optional, and best with children in the room.
The list is not closed. The Faun’s Bookshelf arrived one January and stayed; something else will arrive next year. A canon that never grows is a reading list somebody finished.