cs lewis

Book #2 – Perelandra

/ MB / 2 Comments

Just finished, on 1/7/2022, book #2 for the “read 1 book a week” new years challenge.

The book was Perelandra by CS Lewis.

Wow.

All I can say is wow!

It has been a long time since a book, movie, or show has scared me so much to the point of not being able to fall asleep, but this one did it.

It follows the further adventures of our leading man Ransom, a middle-aged British scholar, who this time around rather then being kidnapped by morally depraved humans and taken to Mars, is spirited away by celestial eldila (what we would most probably call angels) and sent to Venus. The newborn planet of floating islands and innocent new creations has been invaded by another creature, a creature that Ransom has been sent to stop – the devil himself.

Once again, I don’t know if that’s a good enough summary of the book – but I can promise you, that that is the starting off point of it.

What was most frightening was how familiar the words of the devil sounded. From modern tv shows, books, education, social media, the news, academic circles, etc, etc… it was all too familiar.

What I liked was how Ransom has never been put out there as a saintly character or like some kind of superhero, he has always just been a middle aged, academic, Christian Englishman. He is very much a real person. The thoughts and feelings he has throughout the book (throughout both of the books in fact) are ones that I think would be familiar to almost everyone today.

And he had to fight the devil.

He was the one that had been sent, it could’ve just as easily been someone, anyone else, but it was him. So, he had to stand up and fight.

I have heard it said, and I believe it, that Ransom was based off of CS Lewis’s dear friend JRR Tolkien. What I love about that is that it is very clear in reading both Tolkien and Lewis, one a Catholic and the other a born again Christian respectively, that they are in the constant habit of having very intense deep discussions. I love how you can see a similarity of themes, ideas, characters and topics in both of their writings. (btw if my writing style is a little different, that is the direct response of having just spent the last few hours immersed in Lewis’s own writing style, hahaha!🤣)

I don’t really know how to put my thoughts into words… maybe I should wait a day or two to write a proper review, but I wanted to get something down now while the experience was fresh in my mind.

I have also heard it said that one of CS Lewis’s early academic essays that deals with the topic of space travel deals with the question that, and I’m paraphrasing here, “what if the alien life we discover, is a race that has never sinned? What then? We would have to be very careful to make sure that our race did not cause another to Fall.” Again, that’s all paraphrase, I haven’t read that essay myself, (not yet anyways!), but that is the question that is most definitely raised in Perelandra.

Ransom, is essentially dropped into a new Garden of Eden, on the planet Venus, where he meets a new Eve, and then our old devil, in the body of one the men that had kidnapped him in the previous novel, arrives to try to make her Fall.

…

1/10/2021 – I took a few days to try to collect my thoughts a bit more coherently, and still all I can say is YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK! It is so good!!

10 out of 10, 5 out of 5, this book is everything!

Now… what should I read next?

Subscribe below to follow along in this book reading journey of mine!

Read With Me in 2022!!

/ MB / Leave a comment

Happy New Year!

While I was mindlessly browsing the internet the other day, I came across a person’s New Years Resolution that I liked, and it was, “To read 1 book a week.”

At first I was like, “52 books? That’s not a whole lot!”, but realistically it is! Let’s face it – ever since I “grew up”, I really haven’t “had the time” to read. So, my annual book count is definitely, definitely waaaay down there.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to do this one. 😀

I’m going to (do my best) read at least one book per week (realistically sometimes it might be less, sometimes it might be more).

I am happy to say that I’ve already started 😀 and I can check book #1 off my list. The first book of the year has been:

Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis.

Out of the Silent Planet follows the adventures of Dr. Ransom, a philologist, who is kidnapped and taken to an alien planet. Escape from his captors leads to the discovery of new languages, species, and insights into the role of man in the cosmos. (I don’t know if that’s a good way to summarize it haha, but it’s what I’ve got!)

CS Lewis is such a masterful writer that sometimes I feel at a loss to recount what I’ve just read. But, I’m going to try my best here. 😀

Here’s what I liked:

1: evidence of same ideas.

If you’ve read any of CS Lewis before, or any clump of books by the same author before, then you’ll know what I’m talking about here.

Out of the Silent Planet was written well before the Chronicles of Narnia. OotSP was published in 1938, and the first Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 1950. What is so cool about having read the Narnia books as a child and then going and reading OotSP as an adult now, is that you can see similar themes, concepts, ideas, and scenes at their early stages. OotSP is a bit harder to read because it is written for adults and not for children, but it’s also a bit harder to follow (I believe) because CS Lewis himself is still refining his ideas, still honing his craft, still working on the best way to concisely get the message across.

As I writer, I am so encouraged by the authors like CS Lewis, Agatha Christie, William Shakespeare, JRR Tolkien – because they stick to their stories. For some reason there’s this feeling as a young writer, and maybe I’m the only one that’s ever felt this way, but there’s this feeling that your “next story” needs to be ENTIRELY different from your last one. And while CS Lewis wrote a multitude of fiction and non fiction and cannot be accused of being repetitive, he and all of his books have the same heart.

2: space done differently

Outer Space in Mr. Lewis’s book is unlike any other rendition/representation of space that I’ve ever come across. Space is not a cold empty void, it is a bright warm living heaven. After the initial fright of having been drugged, kidnapped, and waking up in a spaceship hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth Ransom spends a lot of time marveling and basking in the beauty and glory of heaven.

3: God, creation, and the devil.

Towards the end of the book, after Ransom has been on the alien planet living amongst the aliens for some months, Ransom meets the ruler of the planet Oyarsa, and from him (as well as from the aliens he’s been spending so much time with) Ransom learns a bit about their planet, how it was created, how there was one creator of all the planets and creatures including men and Earth, and how their is a Bent One chained to the Earth that has been at continual war with the Creator.

I won’t go into too much more of this part, because it was truly the most fascinating and my favorite part of the whole book, so I really don’t want to spoil it for any of y’all’s! It was really good!

It reminded me of Tolkien’s creation story in the Silmarillion, with evil Melkor and all of that jazz.

4: fun writer banter

At the end, there is a post-script chapter between the Author, Lewis, and his friend “Ransom”. It is revealed that the events of the book are true, but that they have been packaged up as fiction so that it will be more widely distributed.

There’s a line where Ransom is complaining to the writer, Lewis, about why does the “reader” need to know this part, and when he says “reader” he adds in brackets “you seem to know a devil of a lot about them!”. 🤣

In conclusion, it was a good book! It was small, it was spacey sci-fiy, it was thought provoking, it was of course well written, it was fantastical, and it was the first in a trilogy. I’ve read the third one That Hideous Strength before, but that was years ago and I can hardly remember it now.

I am definitely looking forward to reading the next two, Peralandra and That Hideous Strength, and in continuing this one book a week thingy! I will post about the books I read once I finish them, so the posting schedule might end up a little wonky, but I hope that you’ll enjoy them.

I hope that you’ll join me in reading this year!😁 Even if we’re not reading the same things.😆

If you’ve read Out of the Silent Planet before, or if you’re going to, or if you have any book recommendations for me – then please let me know down in the comments below! 😀

Cheers! ❤

Book Recommendation: NARNIA!

/ MB / 2 Comments

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis.

This is one of the first books I ever read!

It’s a great book to read at any age, whether you’re 7 or 77.

It follows the lives of siblings Peter, Susan, Edmond and Lucy and their adventures in the magical world on the other side of a dusty old wardrobe.

The world of Narnia – where there are fauns and talking beavers and terrifying witches. It’s a place where, when the children first arrive in it, it is always winter but never Christmas.

The arrival of the 2 sons of Adam and 2 daughters of Eve is the sign that the return of Christmas, spring and Aslan and then end of the White Witch’s reign is near.

CS Lewis is such a good writer!!

Each chapter is only about 10 pages long and, though he’s writing for children, there is no condescending going on. He respects the intelligence of the reader and delivers a story that is – simply put, a classic.

Everybody should read The Chronicles of Narnia.

Everybody.

100/10!

Also, if you’re only prior exposure to Narnia was the live action disney movies then please – FORGET THOSE!!

The books are a thousand times better AND there’s a cartoon movie from 1979 that is PHENOMENAL!! Go find and watch that – PLEASE!

Thank you! 🙂

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Loki Finale – We’ve Seen You Somewhere Before!

/ MB / Leave a comment

Yes, we have seen Loki somewhere before, but no I’m not talking about the Multi-Verse or any of the Marvel movies or indeed any of Mr. Hiddleston’s movies. I’m talking about the content similarities in the finale of the first season of Loki. Don’t get mad Sylvie & Loki, it only makes sense that the show would copy classics just as you two did.

Similiarity # 1: Nevermore aka Shadar’s Castle from Ni No Kuni, and the concept of fighting/killing alternate versions of oneself.

Similarity # 2: Castle Fairfax aka Lucien’s Castle from the beginning of Fable 2 and the awful choice that has to be made by our Hero(s) at the end.

Similarity # 3: The Dark Tower written in the 1940s by Mr. CS Lewis and the monster sitting alone in their tower watching other timelines as well as the history of the discovery of time travel that included a mad scientist experimenting on children.

First, Nevermore…

If you’ve played (or would now like to play) Ni No Kuni, the Miyazaki PlayStation adventure game, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Near the end of the game our hero, Oliver, finally makes it to the evil villain Shadar’s castle, the castle Nevermore. The mission is all very topsy turvy, with the camera angles constantly shifting and turning till it feels for some of the time like you are playing upside down. And Loki gave us that with the twisting turny camera angles as Loki and Sylvie entered the Citadel at the End of Time.

Then, Oliver gets to talking to Shadar and Shadar tells him about how the two of them are Soulmates and that Oliver shouldn’t have even been born because he, Shadar, had been going about and killing all of his Soulmates to prevent any of them from mending his Broken Heart. Much like how our Kang, or He Who Remains, in Loki talked about how he met himself many times over and that some of him were much, much worse.

Second, we have Fable 2 and Castle Fairfax…

The room that Loki, Sylvie and Kang are sitting in looks EXACTLY (ok, almost exactly) the same as the room that the main character and the main character’s sister, Rose, enter into in the very beginning of the game. The room where Lucien, the master of the castle, kills Rose and then attempts to kill the main character thus propelling the plot of the game.

Then, at the end of Fable 2 the hero is given 3 choices – 1 good, 1 evil and 1 neutral and the player of the game is free to choose whatever choice they’d like. Much the same as Loki and Sylvie are given the choice of Rule the TVA or Unleash the Multiverse and let chaos rein! More or less.

Third, we have The Dark Tower by CS Lewis.

Not to be confused with The Dark Tower by Stephen King, ok, CS Lewis wrote his unfinished tale years before King was even born.

But anyways, in The Dark Tower this group of scientists have created this Chronoscope that allows them to look through a scope into another time, a timeline that is projected onto a fabric screen. Much like the projection screen in the first episode of Loki when Mobius is showing Loki his timeline. Through the Chronoscope they are able to view this valley that has a singular Dark Tower in it’s center. In the tower sits a still dark figure that I don’t want to go into here, but suffice it to say if you’d like a good little scare then please, go and read Mr. Lewis’s unfinished story, it is quite hair raising.

Jumping over a lot of major details there is then a sequence in the story where one of our characters finds himself in that other timeline reading up on their history of time travel discovery. Just like Kang a scientist created a device, discovered that there were other timelines, discovered that there were other versions of ourselves on those timelines and decided to experiment, using the young of course, on crossing over into those other timelines. Unfortunately for us, this is where Mr. Lewis stopped writing so we don’t get much more, but the similarities between Kang and the scientist in this other timeline were so striking that I found myself shouting at my laptop “they’re just doing The Dark Tower!”

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are more time travel classics buried in this final episode of Loki alone, not to mention the entire show, but these were just the major comparisons that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Finally, I would just like to finish by saying I LOVED this show and I CANNOT WAIT for season 2.

Bring on the Multi-Verse!!! Tobey Maguire is back everybody!!

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.