[Today’s run: rest day]
I received a set of C S Lewis books for my birthday about a month ago and I have been reading through them.
I enjoy C S Lewis. (Have I said that before?) He seems like a smart guy but I can follow his line of thinking. Or at least I think I can.
I have always enjoyed “The Four Loves” and I like “Perelandra”. I was not very excited by “The Screwtape Letters” or “The Great Divorce”. Right now I am working on “Miracles”. I liked “Surprised By Joy”, but the copy I had was a misprint and did not have the last few pages. Someday I will have to get another copy and read it again.
I’ve read the Narnia books and I think they are ok. The first one was the best and after that I’m kind of non-committal. I read them as an adult; maybe if I had done so as a child I would be more impressed. “The Last Battle” is interesting for his depiction of what afterlife could be like: somewhat reminiscent of the scene in the last Harry Potter book.
He had what sounds to me like a “romantic” life. He was single, a thinker and college professor. He married late in life and his wife did not live a long time. (Kind of reminds me of Richard Feynman in that regard, marrying someone who did not live for long.)
Lewis was British, maybe English (but I don’t know the fine points of lineages and lives in the U.K.) He just seems to be accessible to me. I don’t think I agree completely with his Theology in all points. But I enjoy that part too.
I think Lewis must have been a good teacher. I get the feeling that he would not look down on people not “in-the-know” and would have been glad to see everyone learn and grow.
One mysterious thing about him (which I also see in another favorite author of mine, Georges Simenon): he has what I see as a strange relationship in his writings to the world wars, which were the main events in his lifetime. The wartime events intrude a bit into his fiction and a bit into his non-fiction. But you could almost miss that the wars happened. Like the California version of the 1860’s. The war is far away. And that attitude I find kind of intriguing.