“Torey Hayden is an educational psychologist and former special education teacher who, since 1979, has chronicled her struggles in the classroom in a succession of bestselling books.” From the book jacket.

I guess I’ve read all of Torey Hayden’s “bestselling books.’ I just finished Twilight Children about three intertwined lives that Ms. Hayden touched while working in a hospital’s mental ward. I don’t know why I’m so interested in reading about seriously disturbed and usually abused children; I don’t think it’s voyeuristic. There’s something in reading about the fringes of society, the edges of sanity, that makes me think about what normality really means and causes me to try to puzzle out God’s purpose in allowing such evil things to happen to children. Ms. Hayden’s attitude in the books is usually some variation of: “This happened. It shouldn’t have, but now we’ll have to deal with it.”

And she’s not all starry-eyed about the children themselves. Some of them, because of the abusive examples they’ve had and because of their own twisted sin natures, are very difficult to like and to teach. However, Ms. Hayden finds something to reach out to, something to love, in even the most unlovely child. There’s something God-like in Hayden’s dedication to teaching the rejects, the children everyone else has given up on. Aren’t we all unlovely children, damaged by the sins of our parents and our parents’ parents, and far from the grace of God? And He spends an entire lifetime working to convince us that He’s on our side, that if we will cooperate and listen and trust enough to obey, He will transform us from within and make us miraculously fit for heaven.

Torey Hayden’s books don’t draw any of those lessons from her work with disturbed and abused children. I don’t think Ms. Hayden is a Christian. Nevertheless, in His common grace, God has gifted her to display a small bit of who He is and how He loves us.
WARNING: These books and others by Torey Hayden deal explicitly with child abuse and its horrendous aftermath and with destructive lifestyle choices made by many of the adults in the books. Not for the faint of heart or mind.

Two critics from Time magazine have made a list of the “100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.” I counted, and of the 100, I’ve read fifteen. Another four or five I started and never finished. Two of the books are on The List, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

One of the fifteen I’ve read is Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret. I read it over thirty years ago, but I still feel qualified to say that the book probably hasn’t improved with time. In fact, I read the book when I was member of the group of adolescent and pre-teen girls that formed its primary audience, and I wasn’t impressed then. So now this book about a 12 year old girl who talks to God about when she’s going to reach puberty is one of the best English-language novels of the twentieth century?

Either someone was out to lunch when that one slipped in, or there’s something I don’t know about literature or Judy Blume or both. So read the list. Which books that you have read would you subtract from the list? What books would you put in the place of those removed? I’m working on my list of the 100 best fiction books of all time, and I can promise you that nothing by Judy Blume appears on the list. As for Time’s list, I would suggest, instead of Judy Blume, Dorothy Sayers–if her books were published after 1923–and if not, how about Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton or Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns or anything by P.D. James or Hawaii by James Michener or if you want YA fiction, Homecoming by Cynthia Voight? Any of those plus half a hundred others could beat Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret hands down.

More questions about Time’s list. Which of those you’ve read would you recommend and why? I think everyone should read Tolkien and Lewis, of course. And I remember important things from both Animal Farm and 1984 even though I read them many years ago. The Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and An American Tragedy are all good books, too, and deserving of your time if you’ve never read them. I like Gone with the Wind, although I’ve heard it denigrated. Oh, and I remember Thornton WIlder’s Bridge of San Luis Rey very fondly, and I think it brings up important questions for Christians to ponder. (You were wondering which ones I had read, weren’t you? That makes ten if anyone’s counting. The other five are: The Great Gatsby, The Son Also Rises, I., Claudius, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Big Sleep. I might have read The Grapes of Wrath or The Assistant; I can’t remember.)

Jollyblogger posts C.S. Lewis’s Introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation.

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

This relates to my post last week on what characteristics make a book a classic. I said, and C.S. Lewis would agree with me, probably because I unconsciously stole the idea from him:

So insofar as we can recognize and appreciate Truth, we can evaluate literature and perhaps foresee what will stand the test of time. Insofar as we are blinded and have our own pet truths that do not line up with Real Truth, we will praise the poorly written potboiler and scorn the book that reveals our own inadequacies.

So what OLD books (100 years +) have you read lately? I must admit I haven’t really read anything that old lately. Engineer Husband and I are reading Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Genesis, a few paragraphs each night. Oh, and I’m reading Milton for my British Literature class. Does that count?

Go here to read Athanasius on the Incarnation in its entirety, including the introduction by Lewis, courtesty of Phil Johnson of Pyromaniac. The Pyromaniac himself is out setting fires somewhere and plans to be back in a week or two. But Athanasius is older anyway.