Let's Bust a Recap : The Screwtape Letters

Cue the fanfare. With today's post, we have officially cleared 2022 out of the To Be Blogged stack. Life is good.

(All right, fine, in all honesty, there is actually one more book from 2022 hanging out in the stack, but it is being saved for a specific post to come so just let me have my moment!)

The Screwtape Letters turned out to be my second C.S. Lewis read of 2022. Right about now I could feed you some line about how after not managing to read any Lewis at all in 2021, I felt the need to double-down last year, but the truth is: my book club selected it for the month of October, and this was actually my third or fourth time reading it. The Screwtape Letters is probably C.S. Lewis' most famous work outside of the Chronicles of Narnia, and I chose this book for my thesis project in my high school senior English course. I spent a lot of time in the library that semester with this very copy of the book and piles of other resources on Clive Staples Lewis, sitting across the table from my friend Sydney (who is now in the aforementioned book club with me and who's project was on The Pilgrim's Progress in case you were wondering. Our teacher constantly confused the two of us because I'm pretty sure we were the only two in the class who chose religious works from the approved list—what I wouldn't do to get my hands on a copy of that list today—and now this parenthetical rabbit trail has officially gone off the rails. Can I get a show of hands in the comments if you find the scattered inner workings and random reminiscences of my mind amusing? Or is this absolutely insufferable to read?). Naturally, as I've already confessed on this very blog, I didn't finish reading it at that point in my life, but I've read it since, and it's one that hits me differently every time I read it.

Let's focus. The Screwtape Letters is an epistolary novel made up of thirty-one letters from a senior demon called Screwtape who is acting as a mentor to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. Lewis used this self-termed "demonic ventriloquism" to address Christian theological issues having to do with temptation and the resistance to it. Throughout the novel, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining God's directives, interspersed with observations on human nature and the Bible. The result is a masterclass in satire, entertaining and enlightening readers the world over with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles. The letters were originally published weekly in an Anglican periodical during wartime from May to November in 1941. The book was published the next year in February of 1942. Later in 1959, Lewis wrote a short article entitled "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" which was published in the Saturday Evening Post, and nowadays, this is typically included with The Screwtape Letters.

In a foreword to "Screwtape Proposes a Toast", Lewis stated he had never written anything more easily or with less enjoyment than The Screwtape Letters. Although he received numerous requests throughout his life to add to the letters, he resolved never to write another one saying the process of writing them almost smothered him before he finished. Despite that, in writing The Screwtape Letters, Lewis inspired loads of other authors to prepare sequels or similar works of their own. Even apart from literature, The Screwtape Letters can be seen cropping up in all forms of pop culture from comics, to music, to political discourse. 

As I mentioned earlier, each time that I read The Screwtape Letters, a particular letter will usually stand out like a sore thumb and hit me in a new way. On this particular go-round with the demons, Screwtape's words in his seventeenth letter to Wormwood seemed to jump off the page, and I've been ruminating on them ever since. In this letter, Screwtape is postulating on the temptation of gluttony, and he gives Wormwood the demonic distinction between the gluttony of Delicacy and the gluttony of Excess. While we humans tend to think of gluttony only in terms of Excess, Screwtape makes the point that quantities do not matter, "provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern". He goes on to explain that "because what [the human] wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance." 

I mean, right?! This hit me like a load of bricks. In our culture, we seems to be increasingly obsessed with every single thing that goes into our bellies. We have to count calories, or we have to eat clean, or we can't eat off plastic, or, or, or....the list goes on and on. While we're merely "trying to be healthy", the ultimate reality is that instead of keeping our attention on Christ, we're being ruled by our own bodies. The deception is subtle, but aren't the cunning ones the most devious?

In sum, I highly recommend The Screwtape Letters. It holds up to multiple re-readings, and if it doesn't spark some self-examination, I'm not sure what will. It's good fun while still packing a punch, and no matter when I read it, it usually sends a little chill down my spine at some point or other which makes it a particularly good read for the fall when witches and demons and the forces of darkness tend to abound. 

Next up in my pilgrimage through the work of C.S. Lewis: Miracles.

Let's Bust a Recap : Sherlock Holmes

Welcome one and all to the third week of August in the Year of Our Lord 2023 which will otherwise be known on this blog as "The Week We Try to Clear the To Be Blogged Stack of Books Read in 2022". We're close, y'all. So close. And in an effort to accomplish our goal, today I'll be talking about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first two short story collections featuring everyone's favorite sleuth: Sherlock Holmes. 

Way back in 2021, I picked up Conan Doyle's first novel in which old Sherlock appeared, and devoured it in about a day. A few weeks later, his second novel met the same fate. Shortly after that, I began on The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, confident that I would finish it and also The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes before 2021 was through. 

...and then stalled for nearly a year. What can I say? I swing for the fence. It turns out, I have a lovely habit when it comes to short stories of reading one or two, and then forgetting the rest of the collection for months on end. This bears no reflection on the stories themselves, just on my personal attention span. Sherlock Holmes' short stories are so individual in nature and each one is so satisfyingly wrapped up that there is no narrative drive to continue reading them until you're finished. (At least not for me anyway.) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were a rip-roaring good time. I just managed to stretch these twelve short stories from July of 2021 to April of 2022. In this collection, we get our first introduction to the enigmatic Irene Adler in "A Scandal in Bohemia". She's one of the only people to ever outsmart Holmes, and she's so clever about it that it makes this story one of Conan Doyle's personal top twelve. I hope we see more of her. His other stories cover a range of bizarre stories involving the KKK, a bank robbery, and even a goose with a precious jewel stuffed down its throat. Of the twenty-three short stories I've read so far, this collection contained my two personal favorites; number one being the horrifyingly creepy "The Speckled Band", and number two being the delightfully hilarious "The Red-Headed League". Coincidentally, in doing a little research for this post, I discovered that these are also Conan Doyle's two favorite stories out of all the Holmes mysteries that he wrote. Cheers to that! I also really liked "The Man With the Twisted Lip" from this collection.

I did a little better with the next set, starting them in April and finishing them in October of the same year. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is Conan Doyle's second collection of short stories about Sherlock (eleven of them this time) and the one that was meant to end the character for good. When "The Final Problem" was first published in The Strand Magazine in December of 1893, the public outcry was so severe that The Strand almost went out of business. Conan Doyle was eventually convinced to resurrect the beloved character and went on to write two more novels and thirty-three more short stories about him. 

In this collection, we get to read about Holmes' very first case in "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", one of the uncommon instances where we hear the case from Holmes' perspective as he recounts it to Dr. Watson. We also are introduced to Holmes' brother Mycroft in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", in which we learn that Mycroft is even smarter than Holmes' but is too lazy to actually pursue detective work. And of course, we also meet Sherlock's famous nemesis Professor Moriarty in "The Final Problem" in which Sherlock presumably goes over a cliff taking Moriarty with him to their deaths. 

The cases in this collection had a more melancholy feel to them, and my favorite was easily "The Adventure of the Yellow Face" which was heartbreaking but had a beautiful ending. From this collection, Conan Doyle ranks two of the stories in his personal top twelve: "The Final Problem" and "The Musgrave Ritual". 

If you start with the novels (which I did), you're already aware of Sherlock's general disdain for law enforcement or, really, authority of any kind, but in reading these first two collections of short stories, it was interesting to see Sherlock's personal sense of justice. There were multiple stories wherein Sherlock doesn't actually out the culprit for reasons he deems worthy, whether it's because he thinks they'll pay for their crimes in other ways due to the life choices they've made, or that they're old and about to die anyway, or even because he is certain that it will bring them too much embarrassment to try anything underhanded again...or that they're too chicken. 

All in all the stories are so fun to read purely because of how absolutely bizarre the cases and how ingeniously Sherlock manages to solve them. The economy of language Conan Doyle employs in writing them make them quick reads, easily ingested in a single sitting. I remember toting my large, hardcover copy with me to work so I could squeeze in a story here and there on my breaks. I definitely would recommend reading at least one short story spotlighting the brilliant mind of Sherlock Holmes: once you start, you won't want to stop. And here's my personal suggestion to you: since these stories don't need to be read in any particular order to enjoy them, start with one of my favorites and let me know what you think!

Let's Bust a Recap : The Knowledge of the Holy

To close out Christian Non-Fiction Week here on ye olde blog, we're bringing in our heavyweight contender: A.W. Tozer's 1963 classic, The Knowledge of the Holy. This slim 117-page volume is considered by many in the evangelical world to be the definitive work of the last century on the attributes of God and as recently as 2006, The Knowledge of the Holy was named in the "Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals". In a preface to his penultimate work which was written near the end of his life, Tozer states that the need for it arose from his observation of the loss of the concept of the majesty of God in the Church. And let me tell you: if it was a problem Tozer could readily observe in 1963, it's an even bigger one now.

"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." I couldn't even try to tell you how many times I've heard these words come out of my dad's mouth. With this sentence, Aiden Wilson Tozer opens his first chapter of The Knowledge of the Holy and then quickly goes on to point out that "the essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him". Yeah. Tozer comes out of the gate swinging and he pulls no punches for the rest of his compact book. 

Even though it's been almost a year since I read The Knowledge of the Holy, I still find myself mulling over the things I read in this little book. My two main takeaways from this, my first reading of it, are thus:

1. I am utterly incapable of comprehending the majesty of God. While it is good and right and necessary for me to meditate on the person of God, I will only ever scratch the surface of who He is. He is above this world while I am a part of it and for that reason, I can not even begin to plumb the depths of His glory.
2. The attributes of God can never be divided. I can't take a single character trait belonging to God and pluck it out to observe it without stringing along all the others. In my humanity, I sometimes see myself being patient while not being very loving about it. Or I think of a judge proclaiming a sentence without any mercy. But God's patience is always perfectly loving, just, holy, merciful....the list goes on and on. It boggles the mind.

"The child, the philosopher, and the religionist have all one question: 'What is God like?'" In The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer attempts to answer this question and with every word, he turns the reader's attention back to the majesty of God. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is worth every second of time it takes to read it and more beyond that. 

Let's Bust a Recap : In His Image

Way back in June of 2021, I read Jen Wilkin's None Like Him which was originally published in 2016. I had been hearing only good things about Jen Wilkin, and her work lived up to the hype. I immediately slated her 2018 follow-up In His Image for my 2022 book list and ended up reading it last September.

Yes, that's right. We still have books hanging out in the To Be Blogged stack from last year. The struggle is real. Since we talked about Lysa TerKeurst's book on Monday, I decided this would be Christian Non-Fiction Week on the blog, and we'd try to clear out that genre from the stack. 

If TerKeurst's book typifies everything I'm trying to avoid when picking up Christian non-fiction, then Wilkin's books epitomize everything I'm looking for when I turn to this genre. 

In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character is the counterpart to None Like Him in that, while None Like Him focuses on ten attributes of God that He alone possesses, In His Image focuses on ten attributes of God we were created to demonstrate in our own lives. Those ten attributes are holiness, love, justice, goodness, mercy, grace, faithfulness, patience, truth, and wisdom. Once again, covering all ten of these attributes in a mere 153 pages seems like an impossible—maybe even laughable?—undertaking, but again, Wilkin never claims to plumb the depths of these traits. In fact, no one could ever plumb these depths. However, in that accessible—but not condescending—language that I so appreciated about None Like Him, Wilkin challenges the reader to consider these divine character traits and how those traits have or have not been reflected in the reader's life. 

And wow, what a challenge. In her introduction, Wilkin claims to answer the question of God's will for our lives. No small claim. But she explores something that often gets overlooked in modern-day Christendom. That the will of God has less to do with what we do, and everything to do with who we are. Wilkin's thesis is that as Christians, we're asking the wrong question. Instead of asking God what He wants us to do, we ought to be asking Him who we should be. This reinforced the teaching I have sat under my whole life at home and in church. (Ah, the joys of having a father who was also my pastor.) That I can know God's will for my life. And what is that will? That I be holy, loving, just, good, merciful, gracious, faithful, patient, truthful, and wise. In short, that I will be daily conformed to the image of Christ. While a lot of times in life we'd like a skywriter to spell out a simple "yes" or "no" to should I do this or not, the true work of sanctification, the true will of God is in my becoming more like Him, in reflecting His divine image to a world in desperate need of Him. 

Because of the very nature of these two books by Jen Wilkin, I found In His Image to be more practically applicable than None Like Him, and I think because of that, I felt like I got more out of In His Image. But that in no way diminishes the benefit of reading None Like Him. Both bear revisiting due to the fact that it is my life's goal to keep the attributes of God and how they affect me and effect change in me ever at the forefront of my mind. In her conclusion to In His Image, Wilkin states, "Everything we say or do will either illuminate or obscure the character of God. Sanctification is the process of joyfully growing luminous." Oh that each day I would grow more luminous.

Let's Bust a Recap : It's Not Supposed To Be This Way

All right, here it is: I did not like this book and I did not find it helpful. I want to start out, right off the bat, by saying that my criticisms of this book are in no way meant to minimize or poke fun at the truly difficult and heartbreaking things that Lysa TerKeurst has experienced in her life. She's had an incredibly hard marriage (which ended in divorce recently) and she's encountered life-threatening health issues, all of which I'm sure were awful and scary to live through. 

Having given you that disclaimer, let's get into it. Lysa TerKeurst is the president of something called Proverbs 31 Ministries, and she's the New York Times best-selling author of a whole passel of Christian non-fiction books geared toward women. Her most well-known book is probably Uninvited, but It's Not Supposed To Be This Way (published in 2018) is the first book of hers I've read. Subtitled "Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered", It's Not Supposed To Be This Way claims to offer advice for readers suffering from disappointment and disillusionment, counseling them to see disappointments as opportunities to encounter God, and advising them of better ways to process unmet expectations. 

So the premise is good, right? Even the title—It's Not Supposed To Be This Way—is right on the nose. God did not create a fallen world; He created a perfect one. We all have to deal with the fallout of a sin-infected world and that means being disappointed and having our expectations crushed. 

But how was the execution? Here's where I take issue. First of all, this is one of those Christian self-helpy kind of books that's all, "Hey sister, I know right where you're at and I'm right there with you and let's get through it together" like we're drinking a cup of coffee at our favorite spot together. And to be totally transparent: that style is just not my cup of tea. I think there's a time and a place for books written in a more conversational tone but dealing with literally the hardest issues in life is not that time or place for me as a reader. There's nothing glaringly wrong with anything that TerKeurst says in this book, but it comes across incredibly clichéd. Like all the rhyme-y platitudes you can possibly think of are tossed around with abandon. But my biggest beef with It's Not Supposed To Be This Way is how laughably out of touch TerKeurst came across to me. If I was coming to this book in the direct aftermath of finding out about spousal infidelity or a devastating cancer diagnosis, I'm pretty sure the last thing I'd want to read about is Lysa overcoming her fear of wearing a two-piece swimsuit or how overwhelming it was for her to paint on a blank canvas. And yet that's what I found myself reading about. The best parts were the direct quotes from Scripture, but—and let me be clear on this—not her applications which were far too "me-focused" to be particularly helpful. 

Ultimately very shallow, not edifying to me personally, and pretty self-absorbed to boot. For those reasons: I'm out. Would not recommend, would not read again and I won't be picking up any more books by Lysa TerKeurst. 

Let's Bust a Recap : The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Ok, book-lovers. I don't generally give star ratings because, let's face it, they're too subjective and my five star book might be your one star book and vice versa. But after reading The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, all I can think is: that was a solid three-star read. Very middle of the road. I just didn't feel that strongly about it one way or the other. 

I picked up my copy of this popular 2014 novel several years ago at The Book Shelter, and, as is usually the case, it has hung around on my shelves since then largely ignored. But this year, the movie adaptation came out on hulu, so my book club and I decided to read it together. 

In The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, we meet our grumpy protagonist—a widowed book store owner on the quaint Alice Island—a little over a year after his wife has died in a car accident. He subsists on crappy frozen dinners, he's given up exercising, and he's slowly drinking himself to death. His plan to sell the bookstore and retire comfortably is shot to pieces when his extremely rare and incredibly valuable copy of Tamerlane is stolen out of his apartment. Thankfully, he has people in his life who genuinely care for him including his late wife's sister Ismay and the island's chief of police Lambiase, and when a mysterious package shows up at Island Books, Fikry is awakened to a new life he couldn't have imagined for himself. 

I liked the premise. The vague blurb on the back cover did not give away the big twist in the mystery package. I loved how each chapter opened with A.J.'s notes on a famous short story and how Zevin used those openers to foreshadow the chapter to come. The literary references throughout the book are great. I don't know, it just didn't all add up somehow. The emotional ending didn't feel earned. It just kindof fell flat for me. Fikry was giving Ove or Eleanor Oliphant. But if I were to grade them, Ove and Eleanor get an A+; Fikry gets a B-. 

The movie was much the same. I thought the script was actually very nicely developed for this to be a solid book-to-screen adaptation, but the acting was not good. (With the possible exception of David Arquette playing Lambiase.) Every character seemed to speak in a monotone, and some even seemed to be reading their lines straight off a cue card. Lucy Hale looked like the exact opposite of how I pictured the plucky book sales rep Amelia. I liked the score but it felt off in the film. Like it was trying to generate the emotional response in the viewer that the actors certainly weren't going to elicit. And the use of green screens was pretty glaringly obvious. The cutest thing in the movie was the physical Island Books storefront. Overall, good adaptation; bad movie. 

What else can I say? Read it, don't read it—whatever. *shrugs* The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is just fine. That's all.