Classics Considered

Well, I missed last week, so once again playing catch up with the readalong.  :)  Here are the last two parts - and thanks again to Cleo for hosting this! Week 3: Friendship In this chapter, Lewis talks about what he considers to be the "least natural" of the loves: Friendship.  It is less "organic" than the other loves, because, unlike Affection which nurtures or Eros which propagates, Friendship is, in a sense, superfluous in that it is not necessary to our survival. In fact, it can be viewed with distrust by authorities or groups of humans, because it means at least two people have withdrawn from the group and are connected by something which distinguishes them from the rest. This was the most interesting chapter of the book.  I don't have a wide circle of friends, but I appreciate each one I have (online and offline), and I think Lewis pinpoints why it is so hard to find good friends.  The problem frequently lies with us.  So often we are looki...

Cleo has been hosting a read-along of The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, and happily I've been keeping up with it well, in spite of some reader's block.  These are the parts I've read so far: Week 1: "Introduction" and "Likings and Loves for the Sub-Human" Week 2: "Affection" First off, this book is not quite what I was expecting, and I say that not as a criticism but as an observation.  Lewis's style is a little rambling, in some places like a sermon that switches from topic to topic fluidly but lacks the structure you'd expect from a book with such a structural title.  He focuses on certain aspects of each topic, rather than giving a detailed overview of the whole.  For example, my biggest takeaway from "Likings and Loves..." was his view on healthy vs. unhealthy patriotism; in "Affection," it was more on "what to avoid" rather than "what to do."  It doesn't make the book any less reada...

Hope everyone is doing well this fine June... It feels like the month is FLYING by.  Tomorrow is going to be about 90 degrees where I live, so I'd say summer is here. Since I finished 12 Rules for Life , I've been having pretty bad reader's block.  You wouldn't necessarily be able to tell... Current status seems productive: Still slowly plugging away at the Tesla biography (it's interesting but very brainy) On track for Cleo's read-along of The Four Loves (Lewis), though I failed to post for part 1 (will roll it up into the next part) Also reading Master and Commander (O'Brian) and The Scapegoat (du Maurier), both of which are pretty good books so far I think recent "real-life" stress has zapped my attention span.  I hate it when that happens. There are certain types of books that can get me out of that.  I will probably keep sampling books till I find one.  Till then, it might be kinda quiet around here...

It's been about fifteen years since I first read The Time Machine .  It was so unlike anything I'd read before.  Afterwards, I even wrote my own time-travelling story, which was more like fan-fiction than anything else. I don't often reread books, but as I build my H. G. Wells collection, I figured I'd reread each book and see how it held up over time.  (No pun intended!)  The Time Machine was the first book by Wells I'd read and seemed like a natural starting point. The story begins in Victorian England.  A group of friends - a doctor, a journalist, a psychologist, and others - gather at the Time Traveller's house for their customary meal and conversation.  The Time Traveller at this stage has just created a model of his machine which he says he can build at full-scale and use to travel through time.  The demonstration leaves his guests skeptical, but not long after that, the Time Traveller shows up to one of his own dinners, bedraggled and te...