Interview link

I’ve come across some mull-worthy things here and there this week.

There’s an interview with Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, here. It’s interesting not just as an overview of the book, but for the tone of the interviewer, who characterizes Carr as “worried.” (What’s most striking about the book is that its tone is not [...]

The Hiding Place

The Hiding Place is the story of Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch woman best known as a participant in the Dutch underground during the second world war whose home had a hidden room to shelter those fleeing Hitler’s regime. Or so I’ve always had her classified in my mind. This book makes it clear that [...]

“Hidden stories,” “The problem of Susan,” and “the school of translation”

I learned so many interesting facts reading Alan Jacobs’s The Narnian that I wanted to share a few of them in a post. They might interest others just as much. I want to preserve them for future reference, too.

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First, the discussion of Lewis’s writing of the Narnia Chronicles. What was on his mind as he [...]

The Narnian

Alan Jacobs’s The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis has been recommended to me twice by commenters here. I’ve been working through it slowly and savoring its even-handed, discerning discussion of this much-loved writer. Jacobs tells the story of Lewis’s life with respect for its complexity and, for the most part, a willingness [...]

Intercession, Charles Williams's way

When I reviewed Charles Williams’s Descent Into Hell, I mentioned one of the themes of the story that intrigued me: substitution. Apparently, C.S. Lewis was moved very much by Williams’s ideas on this score as well, as I read today in Alan Jacobs’s The Narnian. I quote it here because Jacobs explains it so clearly:

I [...]

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

If you’ve ever gotten up from the computer and wondered where the last two hours went  –

Or if you’ve ever felt the uncomfortable awareness that you’re checking your email more than necessary –

Or if, like Nicholas Carr, you ever realized that your thought life has changed since you started spending time on [...]

Rereading 'The Doors of the Sea'

I first read The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? about two years ago, and as my review indicates I found it excellent but challenging enough in its presentation to make me complain that it was “showy.” This time through, I still kept my dictionary nearby. But I felt none [...]

Traveling Mercies

I picked up Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith at the Friends of the Library Book Sale a few weeks ago. It sounded familiar, though I’m not sure where I’d heard of the title, or the author, before. It’s a spiritual autobiography of sorts, a series of impressions that, pieced together, give us [...]

The Joy of the Snow

Elizabeth Goudge’s autobiography leaves me with mixed feelings.

In the first half, I was enthusiastic. She is witty and self-deprecating, and I felt that my expectation that I would like this writer personally was confirmed. I really enjoyed the details of her childhood in an Edwardian home and garden, interspersed with trips to the Channel Islands [...]

Hearing God

Dallas Willard’s Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God is less a how-to book than a renovation of our commonly accepted ideas about prayer. Quietly but assuredly, it confronts the skepticism that God would speak regularly and understandably to his children. It meditates on the qualities of God’s voice and emphasizes the disciplines that [...]