Surprised by Joy is the book C.S. Lewis wrote about his religious development. Searching for joy. He writes about being a kid, and finding joy in certain books he read – it is very C.S. Lewis, and at times it was really touching. C.S. Lewis is at his nonfiction best in this book – he’s not talking about the ways in which other Christians fail to measure up. He’s talking about himself, just himself only, and the changes he went through in himself that led him to his current beliefs. Look what he says people seemed to be saying, when…
Leave a CommentReading the End Posts
Just finished reading three books I’d been looking forward to, and none of them wholly pleased me. What I Was, Meg Rosoff – All about a boy called Hilary (bless) who goes to a British boarding school and becomes a bit obsessed with another young boy called Finn, who lives by himself in a little hut that can only be reached during low tide. I thought the revelation about Finn at the end was a bit of a let-down, since the rest of the book didn’t at all seem a revelation-type book. Besides which I do not appreciate stories in…
4 CommentsThe Fire Fighter is about a guy who is good at putting out fires, so good in fact that he gets taken away from the front in Africa, and has to come back to London and protect these five buildings in London, during the Blitz. He is not best pleased about this as it’s not clear to him what’s so good about these five buildings, and the mysterious Military Intelligence people are extremely vague and un-forthcoming. He has a painful past, worries about his mother and brother, and falls in love with a German woman who works as a translator…
Leave a CommentHoly God, how have I lived my life without Joan Wyndham? I’m reading the first volume of her diaries that she kept during World War II, Love Lessons, and I am seriously thinking about stealing this book from the library and keeping it forever. (I won’t though of course.) She charms me. Poor darling Jo, I don’t love him a bit but I am divinely happy playing the fool with him. I know I shouldn’t, because he keeps saying, ‘Oh what an absolute bugger, oh you little bitch!’ We do sometimes reach the farthest point of passion after which coition…
Leave a CommentI love reading other people’s letters. It is probably the fault of the Jolly Postman. (Incidentally, Allan and Janet Ahlberg rocked my world as a little kid, and I only wish I’d known their names so I could have investigated their other books that were not Jolly Postman or Each Peach Pear Plum.) I think it’s fascinating when two people correspond regularly over a long period of time – much more fascinating than just reading collected letters of a single person, although that can be really really interesting too. Joy Street is the collected letters of the editor’s mother, Mirren,…
Leave a CommentWhat a lovely book. I didn’t know Edward Murrow had had anything to do with Britain in the War at all, but evidently he and his wife moved there before the war started and stayed after it began. The Murrows came home to America in 1941, just in time for Pearl Harbor, and then they went back to England again, because Edward Murrow wanted to explain America to Britain and the other way around. When I was reading this book, I discovered lots of nice things about Edward Murrow and his lovely wife Janet. For instance, they moved to London…
3 CommentsMeh. I saw this mentioned on Amazon when I was hunting for something else, so I got it out of the library and read it last night. I wish I had read my book about Edward Murrow instead when I was falling asleep. It wasn’t bad at all, I just never connected with it. There’s nine high school students talking about their backgrounds, and then each of them interviewed someone from a different background about 9/11. I wasn’t as much in the mood for it as I thought I would be, although it did remind me that I want to…
Leave a CommentMeg Rosoff’s second book is about a boy called David Case who becomes obsessed with the idea that he is doomed. He changes his name to Justin as part of a general attempt to disguise himself so that his bad fate cannot find him; he makes friends with a boy called Peter; he has an imaginary dog called Boy; he gets taken up by a rather ruthless photographer girl called Agnes; and a number of things happen to him. I have just finished this book, and here are the two thoughts I had about it: 1. Meg Rosoff has written…
4 CommentsI feel rather smug that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. Nobody suggested it to me, I just got it on my own. Then I liked it. The Children’s War is all about two kids in Europe during the second World War – Ilse, living in Germany and Morocco and France, whose father is Jewish and who really just wants to get back to her mother; and Nicolai, who doesn’t like the Hitler Youth and becomes friends with his nursemaid who is Ilse’s mother. Though both stories were interesting, I found Ilse’s to be the more compelling,…
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