Here's another one I found a few days ago in my phone's news feed, from the website of the UK newspaper the Guardian, in a regular series called "The books of my life", in which present-day writers reflect on the books that have shaped their lives. The Guardian on the whole is not the sort of paper that is sympathetic towards religion, particularly Christianity, so this was a nice surprise. The author featured in this article (Friday 20 Dec 2024) is novelist Samantha Harvey, whom I don't otherwise know anything about, but here is her answer to "The writer who changed my mind":

CS Lewis in his books on Christianity: The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy. I wolfed down these books. They didn’t make me a Christian, but they made me understand why Lewis was, and how radiant, potent, beautiful, strengthening and, well, logical religious faith can be. I wanted to become a Christian after reading them – I wanted to have what he had. But I don’t think this kind of faith is in me.

(As a former agnostic myself, I wish I could assure her that it's not simply about a "kind of faith" that some people can muster up and others just can't, but I doubt she'd be convinced by me, or by any other human being. Which is just the point... it's about someOne much bigger than us, and if he could get through to me, He may well get through to her some day too.) 

This is a little bit different, but I just wanted to share it here. I enjoy playing a daily word game called Squaredle, in which you get a grid with letters in the squares — usually 4 x 4, sometimes bigger — and you have to try to find all the hidden words in the grid by connecting adjacent letters together. (Sort of like a word search, only you can go in any direction from letter to letter, not just in a straight line.) Highly recommended for anyone else here who enjoys games and puzzles like this.

I mention it because in today's puzzle (31st January), I initially noticed it was possible to make the word CHARN, and then I spotted NARNIA in there as well. Proper nouns, including fictional names, don't count as valid in this game, so I knew they wouldn't be part of the official list of words in today's puzzle. But I couldn't help suspecting that it wasn't a coincidence, especially when I read the news that's just come up on NarniaWeb — that Netflix has started looking for two lead child actors, which very strongly points to the new film being The Magician's Nephew. And then as I was completing the puzzle this evening, one of the actual official words to be found in the grid turned out to be CHRONICLE.

So I'm now convinced that at least one member of the "Squaredle Squad" (the anonymous team that puts together most of the puzzles) is a pretty solid Narnia fan and is also following the current Netflix news with great interest. And if they happen to be here on NarniaWeb and reading this, hello and thanks for the fantastic puzzles!