“The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia” by Laura Miller

I am nobody's skeptic. As a matter of fact, I consider myself very, if hardly conventionally, religious. That said, I read Salon co-founder Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia with a constant grin on my face, as passage after passage made me cry out with delight, "friend!" Here is someone who seems to not only understand the love I felt for C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, a love that still endures very deeply in my heart, but also my love of stories and reading. Indeed, she helped me understand that love better, and by consequence, the person I am and the writer I want to be.

“The Gnostic Bible” Edited by Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer

For those interested in the Gnostics and their actual beliefs and mysteries, as well as the early history of Christianity, The Gnostic Bible is a welcome resource. As a matter of fact, The Gnostic Bible is quite possibly the most comprehensive collection of Gnostic materials ever gathered in one volume. The Gnostic Bible collects a wealth of primary sources, Gnostic texts from a wide variety of sources, including three continents and spanning more than 1300 years. The expected texts are present, of course, including the famous Gospel of Thomas, along with some unexpected resources. Making the volume especially useful to students of Gnosticwisdom traditions, the texts are well-organized into distinct movements of Gnostic tradition: Sethian, Valentinian, Syrian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, and even, surprisingly, later Islamic and even Cathar texts.