While it is difficult to pick between the final three books in this series, I think that The Silver Chair is my favorite book of the seven. I love the relationship between the two kids (Eustace from Voyage and Jill Pole, a picked-on girl from the Experimental House school in England), the marsh-wiggle Puddleglum, who, as his name suggests, has difficulty in seeing the bright side to life, and the trapped Prince Rilian. These three aspects makes The Silver Chair an exciting story.
In my review of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I mentioned how the undragoning scene was one of my favorites in the series. Another is in this book regarding the enchanted silver chair. The kidnapped Prince Rilian is under the charms of the evil witch, but has an hour each evening in which he remembers Narnia and Aslan. He is tied up and bound to the chair until his fit passes. The enchanted Rilian acknowledges his fits, and agrees to be tied to avoid these nightmarish thoughts. However, we see that that hour is his true self coming through, and the rest of his life he is under the spell, not the other way around. The application to our lives is clear: we sometimes forget that this is not the real world, but mere Shadowlands, and that we belong to a much better kingdom and follow a more powerful master. We allow the world and its objects to bewitch us and cause us to forget our true home. The key scene in this book is when Eustace, Jill, Rilian, and Puddleglum are attempting to fight the witch, but her soothing voice and plucking harp lures them away from their mission. I hope some pastor out there uses this as a powerful sermon illustration!
I have never read A Christmas Carol even though I’ve seen several movies, many play versions, and even acted as Bob Cratchit in middle school. I felt that I knew the story well, so never bothered to read it. This changed, however, when I watched the Jim Carrey’s version of the story. It showed a much darker version of the story, and I was intrigued to read the book. This story really is darker than the usual presentations. This darkness made the redemption of Scrooge even more vivid and bright.
The writing struck me as especially unique and interesting. I’ve included some passages that I found worthly of marking:
“…turned to misanthropic ice.”
“Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”
"It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
"There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!" "You fear the world too much," she answered, gently.”
“Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.”
“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.”
We often think of Tiny Tim from this story, but I think Dickens was far more concerned with the factory laborers, the miners, the homeless, the “working poor,” than he was merely about Tiny Tim. What are we doing to lightly the burden of those hungry, poor, disabled, lonely?
C. S. Lewis begins this Narnian adventure with on of the best opening lines and character descriptions: “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and his masters called him Scrubb. I can’t tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn’t call his Father and Mother “Father” and “Mother,” but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers and wore a special kind of underclothes.”
Throughout the story, Eustace struggles with believing in Narnia, even though his is in the world, because “he read the wrong kind of books.” In today’s Christian world, we often think that means that readers fill our heads with fantastical creatures and worlds rather than true, serious stories. However, this is exactly the opposite of what Lewis meant. Eustace struggled in Narnia mainly because he didn’t read those books of fantasy, legend, adventure, and myth.
Two scenes stick out in this excellent book, ones that are the stuff of excellent sermons and illustrations for our Christian life. The first is when Aslan “undragons” Eustace by tearing off that hideous skin with his claws. Eustace explains that “it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. They only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.” May we continually allow the Lion of Judah undragon us in our life-long process of sanctification.
The other scene is at the end of the tale when Aslan tells Lucy that she will no longer return to Narnia:
Lucy asks, “And how can we live[there back in our world], never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.
“Are—are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
Spending time with Aslan in Narnia when I read through the series often helps me to see another aspect of the “Aslan” in this world.
[sidenote: I didn’t want to spend time discussing the book versus the movie. I’ll quickly add that even though the movie changed the story considerable—even leaving our the dragon-to-boy transformation—I enjoyed the story.]
Reading a 700-plus-page book at the end of a 52-book challenge is not the wisest idea. What I thought would be a quick read quickly became tedious to finish. It was not the length, but rather the content.
I have never been the biggest Harry Potter fan. I read the books slow and steady, about one every three years. I still have only seen the first movie. While I enjoy the story, I am not compulsed to read and watch through the series in one block of time.
Contrary to what this sounds like, I do enjoy the books while I’m reading them. It’s a well-written series with a great premise about good and evil. In our relativistic, post-modern world, it is refreshing to have a story where there are good guys and bad guys, a story where we want the good guys to win. That is something I appreciate about this series.
The Goblet of Fire did not have the most compelling storyline. I understand that I am not alone in thinking that HP 4 is the weakest one so far. I was not intrigued by the Triwizard championship and didn’t care who would win; the storyline about Hermoine’s quest for fair treatment of elves seemed forced (and, quickly disappeared by the end of the book); the switching of Mad-Eye Moody felt like a cheap trick. As always, I cannot stand reading through a Quiddich match. They are the parts I skim.
I’ll continue reading through the series, especially now that I am over halfway through. I’m in no hurry though. The next Harry Potter will be on my 2013 reading list.
I usually do not take recommendations for books, as I have far too many from my own interests and collection to read through. However, a student from my English class showed me a selection from Simon Rich’s Free-Range Chickens that related to something from our study of Voltaire’s Candide. I read a few pages of this funny book, and went through the whole thing, laughing all the way.
Currently the youngest writer on Saturday Night Live, Simon Rich gives us a book that is a cross between The Onion, David Sedaris, and that really funny friend in high school that you not-so-secretly envied. Free-Range Chickens is funny, funny stuff.
I’m already planning on getting his previous book, Ant Farm. You can download a chapter or two of each on Kindle for free to get a taste.
Thanks, Zoey, for this recommendation!
A conversation between the people who hid in my closet every night when I was seven
Freddy Krueger: When do you guys want to kill him?
Murderer from the six o’clock news: How about right now?
Dead Uncle whose body i saw at an open casket funeral: I say we do it when he gets up to pee. You know, when he’s walking down the hallway, in the dark.
Freddy Krueger: What if he doesn’t get up?
Murderer: He’ll get up. Look at how he’s squirming. It’s only a matter of time.
Dead Uncle: Man, I cannot wait to kill this kid.
Murderer: Same here.
Freddy Krueger: I’ve wanted to kill him ever since he saw my movie.
Alongside Crazy Love and Radical, John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life completes the triumvirate of books pleading with our American Christian culture to do more with our life than chase after the American Dream. This came before the other two, and perhaps led to this new subgenre of Christian books. It is a message that I need to hear often, as I need to be reminded that this world is not all there is to life.
There is much in the book that I enjoyed thinking about. The two main areas are Piper’s thoughts on how we should view our work and how television is a great time waster. For work, Piper explains that “good, honest work is not the saving Gospel of God, but a crooked Christian car salesmen is a blemish on the Gospel and puts a roadblock in the way of seeing the beauty of Christ. And sloth may be a greater stumbling block than crime. Should Christians be known in their offices as the ones you go to if you have a problem, but not the ones to go to with a complex professional issue? It doesn’t have to be either-or. The biblical mandate is: ‘Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men’”(Colossians 3:23; cf. Ephesians 6:7). I was encouraged to be a better teacher as a better witness for Christ. We all worked with those Christians who spent more time jabbing on about religion or Jesus, but everyone knew then as a sloths. For the opposite, I think of my friends Dan and Jace serving in the Air Force at Kadena Air Base. Both are solid Christian men, and excellent workers in their respective shops. Good, honest, trustworthy work brings glory to God in ways that merely talking about Him cannot.
Piper’s section on “Television, the Great Life-Waster” was one of my favorite portions. No matter who you are or where you on in your walk with Jesus, we do not need to be convinced that T.V. wastes our time. Piper quotes from Neil Postman in saying that: “What is happening in America is that television is trans- forming all serious public business into junk. . . . Television disdains exposition, which is serious, sequential, rational, and complex. It offers instead a mode of discourse in which everything is accessible, simplistic, concrete, and above all, entertaining. As a result, America is the world’s first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.”
I’ll end with a popular quote from this book regarding the clutter and trifles on which we waste our life.
I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who “took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.” At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life—your one and only precious, God-given life—and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: “Look, Lord. See my shells.” That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.
