Books Read in the Past Week
December 31st, 20051) The Return of the King - This was at least my third time through this book, though I read more of the appendix than ever before. I hadn’t known that Sam gets to follow Frodo after Rosie dies! Tolkien said he wanted to “try his hand at a really long tale”, and I enjoyed reading the book with that thought in mind. Of course one notices more details each time through, and that is always fun. He has interesting switches in narrative style…sometimes he has a very distant tone and broad perspective while at other times he is very personal, perhaps more often when dealing with the hobbits.
2) The General is one of C. S. Forester’s lesser known works. His Hornblower series is much more popular. Hitler apparently wanted his military guys to read this book and it may still be required reading in some military schools in this country. I was puzzled by this book because I wasn’t certain how I should view the main character, General Curzon, who works very hard but cannot think outside of the box. I spent time reading various reviews, including an entire blog from a university English class on the book. It does indeed suggest that the leadership in World War I failed to adjust to changing tactics and tools of warfare, resulting in a tremendous number of casualties. That was a new idea for me. I’m very interested in that time period, so I enjoyed this historical novel and learned something!
3) The Sea Lions James Fenimore Cooper strikes again! This book is much closer to what a serious Christian romance novel should look like. Mary is a devout Christian. While Roswell believes in God, he cannot accept the idea of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Mary will not even consider marriage with Roswell while this difference exists between them. Roswell spends most of the book on a sealing voyage in the icy south of the globe, where his crisis of faith comes. Some interesting points are brought up. Cooper touches on the idea that Jesus had to be either a lunatic or the Son of God…the “good teacher” idea doesn’t fly all that well. I first read that in C. S. Lewis books…perhaps I followed the arguments in Cooper better as a result. He expands on this idea by bringing in the disciples…their word ought to count for something. Naturally Cooper expressed all this in much, much, much more detail! I am glad he thought it was important. It’s nice to admire an author with some sound doctrine.
4) The Princess Bride The fact that William Goldman wrote the book and the screen play certainly explains why the two are so similar. However, the book has a lot to offer that the movie doesn’t. You get a few more details, a lot more cheesy asides from the author, and a much more entertaining story within a story. By the end of the book I was more than half convinced that Florin really did exist and that the Florin airline’s flights were always full because they wouldn’t take off until they were (I also hunted for reviews on this one to make sure I was interpreting everything correctly!)…you just have to read it! (Be sure to read a version that includes “the first chapter of the long-lost sequel, Buttercup’s Baby …more nonsense to enjoy.)
I forgot that I didn’t actually read the entire Cooper book in the past week…I had started it some time ago and was side tracked. It was nice to finally finish it.
I had kept the idea that C. S. Lewis came up with that argument about Jesus being either crazy or God, though I had my doubts in the back of my mind. In the biography of Lewis I am reading now (by George Sayer), G.K. Chesterton is mentioned as the originator of this idea…at least for Lewis?
Someday my curiousity about exactly who G. K. Chesterton was will boil over and I will actually read something by him.
Forgot that I also read “Med Ship”, a collection of science fiction short stories by Murry Leinster. It was a great deal of fun…I really like science fiction. It was also my first e-book. I wouldn’t mind if it were my last!
I have never read anything by G.K. Chesterton either, except for this quote I found in an Eldredge book: “To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute (from GKC’s What’s Wrong with the World).” I love this quote, and it makes me wonder: was Chesterton a woman, or just insightful?? It makes me curious, too, about what else s/he may have written…have you read anything by him yet??