Almost 40 years ago I received a paperback box set of the Chronicles of Narnia for my birthday as a gift from my sister. I’d already read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe so she thought the set would be a good gift. As it was the school holidays I could sit there and devour the books, reading them all inside of 6 days. I still have that box set with me, even though other treasured books from childhood were given away to nieces […]
One last book for the year!
I was able to squeeze one last review in before the year is up. Even better, it’s a book that’s been languishing on my TBR list. Hooray! I have some goals for 2018, and it’s nice to really trim the to-read pile significantly. This is an author well familiar to me, though I’ve never finished this book until now. C.S. Lewis is perhaps best known for his Narnia fantasy books, but he’s also an academic and Christian apologist. Mere Christianity is a defense of Christianity in post-war, […]
More C.S. Lewis in space!
I read this book while touring Spain on the bus and in between taking shots of gorgeous olive tree hillsides. We did have a few days where we were riding the bus for 3-4 hour stretches to get to the south of Spain and back to Madrid, and that’s when a good chunk of my reading happened for this book. It’s a little more memorable than Out of the Silent Planet, because of Lewis’s cultural context. Let’s dig in. C.S. Lewis the character goes to […]
C.S. Lewis’s weird space allegory, unpacked
It’s a little surreal to be touring Spain while reading a trippy and bizarre space allegory by C.S. Lewis, but that’s where a big portion of June found me. If this review is a bit incomprehensible, then you’ll know why. I’ve heard of the Space Trilogy but never read it until my library offered up all THREE books in one ebook. Naturally, I borrowed it. [Sidenote: I absolutely panicked about twelve days in Spain, so I had my librarian help me figure out Overdrive, Hoopla, […]
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
The Screwtape Letters consists of 31 letters ‘found’ by C. S. Lewis that are from the demon Screwtape to his rookie nephew Wormwood. Wormwood has been tasked with the corruption of a human soul, referred to only as “The Patient.” God is referred to as “The Enemy” while the Devil is “Our Father Below.” The whole thing is a satirical and ironic. I first experienced The Screwtape Letters about 7 years ago as an off-Broadway play, and I loved it. It was funny, and […]
The Most Non-fictional Fiction
I thought I had read or knew about C.S. Lewis’s works, but The Great Divorce slipped my notice until one of my co workers mentioned it. I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve avoided Lewis’s non-fiction work. Granted, I typically don’t a lot of non-fiction to begin with, but I prefer Lewis’s fictional works. As luck would have it, The Great Divorce is a fictional piece although it reads like non-fiction. This combination makes it an interesting read, nothing like I’ve read before. There was […]