I got the book, C.S. Lewis in Context by Doris T. Myers. I'd read parts of it online previously and am really glad I got to read the whole thing. If any of you listen to the Narniaweb podcast, you may remember a discussion they had about Michael Ward's books arguing that C.S. Lewis, being interested in medieval cosmology, wrote each Narnia book to correspond to one of the seven heavens. And if you read the comments section, you may remember that I liked the idea of writing about how Lewis' interests are reflected in his books but I found Ward's style off-putting and presumptuous. Well, I'd say that C.S. Lewis in Context could be described as Planet Narnia done right. It looks at each of Lewis' major works of fiction and analyzes how he combined previous genres and how they reflect his opinions about then current linguistic debates.

The book actually gave me a greater appreciation for a Lewis book I don't really like, That Hideous Strength. (Not that I hated it or anything. The nice thing about books by a great author is that even you don't like it one the whole, there are individual things about it that are really good or at least interesting.) Myers also seems to have thought of the book as an intriguing failure but she helped me see what Lewis was trying to do better and why he had problems conveying it. I felt that in the scenes with Jane Studdock interacting with the Pendragon, Lewis spent too much time telling the reader how to feel rather than actually making them feel that way, which isn't a usual problem for him at all. Myers claims that this because Lewis was using a realistic mode of writing when a more poetic mode would been better for conveying what he was going for. I also would have described the book as having an anti-science message but Myers argues that Lewis wasn't demonizing scientists so much as satirizing modern attitudes towards science.

Because modern people respect science, they tend to respect any group or activity that calls itself scientific. Where an earlier age claimed truth by "the Church teaches" or "the Bible says", twentieth-century man proclaims, "Science has proved." As Feverstone (one of the villains) admits, Belbury calls itself the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments in order to gain the acceptance that is attached to science. That is why it needs Jules as a putative head-his a popularizer of science. That is why it needs "a sociologist who can write"-until its power is secured, its activities must be explained very carefully. The clues are there but Mark, the "trained sociologist with a radically realistic outlook" is too used to respecting anything calls itself scientific to pick them up. Ironically many readers have been gulled along with Mark and thus they produce a knee-jerk response when it seems that science is being criticized. There are things that Lewis could have done better, but he is hardly to be blamed when members of his audience hold the same misconception he is attacking.

That's not to say I agree with all of Myers interpretations of Lewis' fiction. For example she says that the characters in The Last Battle aren't encouraged to fight bravely by the hope of an afterlife. This a slight exaggeration. While it's just one moment, Jewel does tell Jill that the stable door may be the door to Aslan's country for them. And I think her interpretation of the Dawn Treader as a picture of the Church is a big stretch. But the nice thing about the book, I feel, is that you can enjoy it without agreeing with all its takes on the books it's analyzing. Michael Ward, by contrast, seems so committed to convincing everyone of his interpretations that it's hard to completely enjoy his books if you're not convinced.

I recommend the book to all Narniawebbers, those that can enjoy scholarly books anyway. (Even if they don't generally enjoy scholarly works, I think Narnia fans should give it a try. It's relatively accessible for a piece of academia.) I'm sure everyone here will be thrilled to know that Doris Myers considers The Chronicles of Narnia Lewis' best works of fiction. I'm not sure I'd agree myself but I think it's nice that she sees that a book can be aimed at children and still be Great Art, worthy of serious analysis.

2019 was the first time in several years that I kept track of the books I read. Here is my list:

Novels:
The Seven Wonders by Steven Saylor (Roma Sub Rosa)
Raiders of the Nile by Steven Saylor (Roma Sub Rosa)
A Hero for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi (The WondLa Trilogy #2)
The Battle for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi (The WondLa Trilogy #3)
Taran Wonderer by Lloyd Alexander (The Chronicles of Prydain #4)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ambush at Corellia by Roger Macbride Allen (Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy #1)
Assault at Selonia by Roger Macbride Allen (Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy #2)
Showdown at Centerpoint by Roger Macbride Allen (Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy #3)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #1)
The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #5)
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Burning by Kathryn Lasky (Guardians of Ga'Hoole #6)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Oz #1)
The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Oz #2)
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
The Talk-Funny Girl by Ronald Merullo
The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Short stories:
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Signal Man by Charles Dickens
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf
The Conscience of the Court by Zora Neale Hurston
Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid

Medieval literature:
Culhwch and Olwen
The Knight of the Cart by Chretien de Troyes
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle
Chevrefueil by Marie de France
Lanval by Marie de France
The Song of Roland

Non-fiction:
Midnight in Peking by Paul French

Other:
Boxen by C. S. Lewis
Spirits in Bondage by C. S. Lewis

I'm kind of surprised I read a grand total of one nonfiction books this year. I guess I was reading mostly bits and pieces of nonfiction rather than entire books.

Jeannie Gaffigan's new book "When Life Gives You Pears: The Healing Power of Faith, Family, and Funny People" (book review-link at https://potluck2point0.wordpress.com/20 ... hen-pears/ ).

The comedian's wife's memoir of her surviving brain surgery to remove a pear-sized tumor, and how her family and faith-family rallied around her to help.

I've read quite a few interesting books in the last couple of months!

The Faithful Spy is an semi-graphic novel (lots of illustrations, but not a comic) about Bonhoeffer by John Hendrix. The drawings are wonderful, bringing so much depth to the biography. It's excellent - definitely a good introduction to the subject for older children/teens.

Rough Magic: Riding the World's Wildest Horse Race by Lara Prior-Palmer was a Christmas gift, so I began it knowing nothing about the subject. Lara became the first person to win the Mongol Derby, the world's longest horse race, in 2013, despite apparently being hopelessly unprepared. It's a very frank account of her time taking part. I enjoyed this book a lot.

Warrior: The Biography of a Man with No Name by Edoardo Albert is about the excavation of and history surrounding a skeleton dug up near Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland. There's an overlap in the history with a book I read last year, The King in the North, but I enjoyed the details about the excavation of sites which came through from the co-writer, an archaeologist.

I finished The Outcasts of Time by Ian Mortimer yesterday. It didn't take me long to read at all, and I couldn't put it down as I neared the end. It's about two brothers from 1348 who end up spending six days across the centuries - the first in 1447, the second in 1546, and so on. I loved the historical details and I especially enjoyed the questions raised about faith, such as exploring the shift from a Catholic to Protestant country.

That's quite a list, Reepicheep775.

I have a list of the books I read and I listened to last year, but it's a bit long for the thread.

My reading goals for this year are less about numbers (page count and total books) as they have been in the past, and more about content. In 2020, I hope to read (or listen to) a number of nonfiction books (mainly theology) and reread fiction that I own and haven't read for years.

In January I have read...
*Misery Loves Company by Rene Gutteridge - 4 stars, great thriller.
*The Expository Genius of John Calvin by Steven Lawson - 5 stars, interesting read on Calvin's preaching style.
*Shifty's War by Marcus Brotherton - 4 stars, second time reading this one, first time in over 5 years. It was good.
*Too Far Down (The Cimarron Legacy #3) by Mary Connealy - finally finished this, it was okay.
*Sidetracked by Brandilyn Collins - 4 stars, great thriller.
And a few short kids books and two 2020 Christian fiction releases that are not worth mentioning.

I'm currently reading One Perfect Life by John MacArthur, commentary on Mark by Michael Card, and The First Wave by Alex Kershaw. I have set Writers To Read by Douglas Wilson aside for the time being, and I am focusing on reading the Mark commentary and The First Wave of which I've read about a fifth.

I'm also listening to Boo Who? by Rene Gutteridge, The Man In The Dark by Douglas Wilson, and The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul, what I'm listening to depends on what I'm working on at the time.

SnowAngel

It's been a long time since I posted in here but I thought I would stop by. I'm about halfway through Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens currently and really enjoying it. I'd forgotten how well-drawn Dickens' characters can be, and how humourous his work can be. There is a lot of sorrow and injustice in the book too, but I think it makes the understanding of human nature - and the occasions for joy and humour - even brighter.
I'm also wondering what the reaction was to reading it installment by installment when it was first released. Even now,

has me on edge.

I just finished randomly reading PC and VDT, but I need to reread them along with the others in publication order and in chronological order. I think I will probably start my annual reread of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings next.

My reading goals for this year are less about numbers (page count and total books) as they have been in the past, and more about content.

I had tried to read from my list of 25 books several years ago, but it didn't go so well. Not that I don't enjoy reading, but so many things got in the way. So this year, I set a little bit more realistic of a goal. I'm trying to read more classics. I had read Evelina by Frances Burney and plan to read Cecilia and Camilla. Her books are sort of precursors to Jane Austen's novels which made, at least, Evelina quite interesting.

I'd forgotten how well-drawn Dickens' characters can be, and how humourous his work can be. There is a lot of sorrow and injustice in the book too, but I think it makes the understanding of human nature - and the occasions for joy and humour - even brighter.

I know what you mean. That's definitely why I enjoyed Martin Chuzzlewit so much. I really need to read more Dickens. Shockingly, I've never read A Tale of Two Cities. I think that's one that most people end up reading for school. I've watched adaptations of Little Dorrit and Bleak House but never read them, although I managed to start Little Dorrit.

My other goal is to read all of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Marple mysteries that I haven't read as well as to finish Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.

Does anyone else have reading goals for this year?

~Wunder

Those sound like really good reading goals to me, Wunderkind_Lucy! I'm not into murder mysteries myself, but my mum is a huge fan of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

I don't really set official reading goals for the whole year, but I do have a few at the moment. I am currently re-reading all the Chronicles of Narnia in publication order, but taking my time with it. I started with LWW over Christmas and am now up to Chapter 3 of SC.

Meanwhile, I'm also doing a year-long day-by-day reading plan for a new version of the New Testament with the Psalms and Proverbs, called The Passion Translation. It's a paraphrase version rather than heavily literal, but there are a lot of footnotes explaining the translator's choice of wording and it's certainly one of the most readable and engaging Bible translations I've ever encountered. I'm really, really enjoying it and finding it very deeply inspiring.

On a completely different note, just the other day while I was dropping off two bags of my excess books at the Oxfam charity bookshop in Sevenoaks (lovely town near where I live), I spotted a copy of Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin, which is considered "the definitive" biography of Jane and I haven't read it yet. I have read two other excellent ones (Paula Byrne and Lucy Worsley), but this one looks really worthwhile as well. So that's another one I'll be starting soon — and some time in the next few months, when I can fit it in, I'm going to visit Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton, which I have been to several times, but not for a few years now, so it's high time for another pilgrimage! (To my fellow Austen fans here, if you haven't been there and you ever get the opportunity to go, it is an absolute must.)

This is a bit of an odd post for this thread but I've been on the hunt for a while now for a modern set of Encyclopedias. And I found one! The Houston Public Library was selling their hardback World Book Encyclopedia set from 2016 at a steeply discounted price. (Like, just over $100. Normally they sell for $1000.) So I got them. The first installment arrived earlier this week and now I'm just waiting for the rest that are supposed to arrive tonight or tomorrow. So excited....

Isn't it amazing how things come full circle? Encyclopedias were out of vogue for so long, kind of still are, but I think they're coming back. Or maybe I just think that because I'm in the homeschooling community now and they think encyclopedias are cool.

Looking at the books I read in 2019, I'd like to say that my reading goal for 2020 is to read more nonfiction. I'm surprised I only read one nonfiction book cover-to-cover last year. Realistically though, I have so many fiction books on my to-read list, I'd be glad if I just got through all of them. I would like to finish up the books preceding the New Jedi Order in my post-Return of the Jedi Star Wars Expanded Universe chronological re-read (try saying that ten times fast), so that I can start that series at the beginning of 2021 at the latest.

I've been on a reading kick lately, due in part to my local area catching all the various diseases circulating around (no, not coronavirus), so I've been holed up at home because I don't want the flu (still had a couple of my kids catch the stomach flu, blegh).

I read all three books in the Wilderking Trilogy. Not bad! Interestingly enough, the first book was probably my least favorite as it was a fairly close allegory to a certain famous Bible story, but the problem was that when the author chose to go a different direction, I took "issue" with it because "that's not how the Bible story goes!!!" But books two and three were not nearly as strongly tied to the Biblical version, so I enjoyed them a great deal more.

Also, by recommendation of many here on Narniaweb, I finally got my own copies of the Ashtown books. You all will laugh at me though because when I finished book three, I was like, "Wait, what??? This doesn't fully resolve?!??! " I was soooo confused because I thought it was a trilogy as well, but the I looked online a day or two later and saw that due to issues with the new publisher, book 4 has been in whatever the book version of "production hell" is, and is just sitting in the nether. But that made me feel better because I was really thrown off by the ending of book three.

I can see why most, if not all of you, liked it better than the 100 Cupboards series. I would probably agree that it's better written, particularly the character development (one of my biggest issues with Cupboards), but I think Cupboards still speaks to me on a personal level more. And it ends!

Question for you who have read The Door Before, is that supposed to be a prequel

?

I've been trying to rid a bit more lately, despite being assaulted weekly by various college assignments.
Last week I started In the Hall of the Dragon King, first book in Stephen Lawhead's Dragon King Trilogy. I've mainly just enjoyed it for its medieval/fantasy worldbuilding elements, though I must say that I like the fact that Lawhead took a more realistic approach to religion, instead of keeping the equivalent of Christianity in a place somewhat beyond the definition of religion. His characters aren't hugely deep or relatable, but they're fun to read along with as you explore the world.
I also am reading The Medieval Reader, which is basically a compilation of all kinds of original medieval writings from across centuries and continents. AND I'M LOVING IT!
I recently finished Perelandra, and am now reading HHB for the 100th time.

Wunder, I haven't read A Tale of Two Cities either. Nor have I read Martin Chuzzlewit, though I have read Little Dorrit and Bleak House; I enjoyed the former especially.
That sounds like a great reading goal! I don't have any for this year, but I suppose it's not too late to make some.

Hurrah for the encyclopedias, fantasia! I always liked looking at our old copies growing up, though I usually went to my favourite sections instead of reading them through.
That's funny about the first Wilderking book; I would probably have a similar reaction.
I'm glad you enjoyed Ashtown! Funny story - Mel and I read the third book around the same time, and she had thought it was a trilogy and I had thought it was a five-book series, so we were both a bit confused. Yeah, I'm rather disappointed that Book 4 is still in limbo. And I understand 100 Cupboards being nearer to your heart.
I haven't read it, but The Door Before

Cleander, I hope you enjoy the Dragon King trilogy. I read it years ago and have fond memories of it.

I forgot that I hadn't come in and mentioned that I finished Dombey and Son. I enjoyed it and was pretty happy with how it ended. I was amused by the fact that

In the Hall of the Dragon King was one of my favorite books when I was a teenager! I lost count of how many times I read it. We only had the first one, so finding the second book was exciting, and finding a copy of the third was like a treasure hunt. I didn't enjoy the third one, though, because I had expectations of how the story would go--and it didn't. I should reread it sometime and see if I was fair in my critique back then, or if I just didn't want the story Lawhead wrote, because looking back I think he did do something interesting with the characters in the final book.

I read Dombey and Son several years ago, and I remember almost nothing at all about it, except that I enjoyed it and it was a red clothbound book.

I do remember the ending of Empire of Bones, however. Like Valia said, I thought it was Ashtown Burials was supposed to be a trilogy and on one hand, I was like, YES WOW JUSTICE AND SYMBOLISM

. On the other, of course, were all the unanswered questions.

Ditto Valia on The Door Before.

After seeing AJAiken's recommendation of The Outcasts of Time, I read that about a month ago and I also really enjoyed it! It was interesting to think about what changes and what doesn't in an hundred years, and also what you can see and do in just a day.

For those who might be interested, Andrew Peterson is reading On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness tonight, live on FB.