Category Archives: book reviews

Book Review: Cup Of Gold

Originally published in 1929 and selling few copies, “Cup Of Gold” was republished after Steinbeck’s huge successes with later books.

I have enjoyed all the John Steinbeck books that I’ve read. So when I found Cup Of Gold by John Steinbeck on a bookshelf in the house, I put it in a reading pile. Before too long it rose to the top. A little research showed it was published in 1929, though only 1537 copies sold. A second edition in 1936 by a different publisher sold even fewer. My particular volume is a Tower Books Edition, Second printing, April 1944. How this book came into my possession is a mystery to me. I don’t think I bought it, and it has a marker in it suggesting I’ve had it a long time. It must have been Mom’s, or possibly a book Dad picked up from a flea market.

The subtitle is A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History. It’s almost a biography, almost a novel. Today we would classify it, I think, as creative non-fiction. Of, perhaps it would be shelved under historical fiction. Either way, I’m quite glad I had this, found it, and read it.

My 1944 edition is more than a little worn. The title is just barely visible on the spine. Though old, it’s not a collector edition.

Pirates in the Caribbean are the rage now, aren’t they? Maybe not quite as much as a few years back, but they are in an almost mythical era, men who did incredible feats of daring. In America we tend to think of Englishmen who stole treasure ships from the Spaniards. Some worked with the blessing of the British crown and some freelanced. Henry Morgan was, according to Cup Of Gold, one of the latter.

He went to the Caribbean as a teenager, intent on becoming a buccaneer because of the stories he’d heard in his native Wales. He spent time as an indentured servant to pay for his passage, then entered his pirate life. After many successes, he led a raid on the city of Panama, a successful raid, and became a hero to the English.

I read this without distraction, in a comfortable setting.

I read this 269 page book in 18 sittings in July-August 2020, out in the sunroom, at cooler times during the summer days. Here’s what I wrote on little sheet I used as a bookmark and reading record: “What a good book! The death scene is wonderful. If I had not thousands of books to read in my few remaining years, I should like to read this again.”

Steinbeck does a great job (as we would expect, based on his other, later works) of weaving the story. He mixes historical facts with dialog. The dialog seems very faithful to the time. The mix of dialog and narrative is good. Steinbeck chose to focus on a few episodes in Morgan’s life, not try to give us every year and every event. Not surprisingly, the raid on Panama takes up a good chunk of the book.

I can see the excellence of Steinbeck’s writing even in this early book. I’m not a “literary criticism” person, so I’m not going to analyze is. I’ll just say it’s an excellent and easy read. If you like Steinbeck but didn’t know about this early work of his, by all means pick up a copy.

Is this a keeper? Alas, I think not. It’s not a collector edition as it’s a reprint after Steinbeck’s fame with other works. I’m at the point in life where I need to be getting rid of things, not saving them. That includes books. I can’t keep all the authors I like, and Steinbeck, alas, doesn’t make the cut. So, Cup Of Gold is going out to the garage today, to the sell/donate bookshelf out there, awaiting either a sale of a trip to the thrift store.

Book Review: On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection

Alas, this book is falling apart. Tonight it will go into the trash.

Several decades ago I read the book Origins by Irving Stone, checked out of a library. It’s what we now call creative non-fiction, not quite a novel and not quite a biography of Charles Darwin. I liked it a lot. It presented Darwin in a sympathetic way. I learned a lot about him.

Flash forward three decades. I saw Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection at a thrift store, I grabbed it and put it on my reading pile. It sat there for several years, until May this year. Having finished another book, and ready for something new, I went searching for this book in my downstairs, storeroom library. It took a couple days of looking but I found it, exactly where I remembered seeing it a couple of years ago. I began reading it on May 14, 2020 and finished on July 29, 2020 in approximately 50 reading sessions.

Did I enjoy it? Not particularly. Did I learn for it? For sure. Do I recommend it to others? I’m not sure. It was a difficult read. The language, being from the 1850s, is somewhat archaic. Sentences are long and convoluted. Paragraph breaks sparse. It’s not exactly old English, but it’s not modern either. In addition there were lots of scientific terms, and lots of partial references to other experts Darwin consulted.

Over 40 reading sessions for 460 pages indicates how difficult this was to read.

Reading it was a struggle for me. I wanted to read for comprehension, but often I found myself skimming, or reading the same paragraphs two or three times trying to understand it.

Why did I read it? I wanted to get Darwin’s theory directly from him, rather than filtered through a science teacher or science textbook. What exactly did Darwin say? Does it seem plausible? Where should I go next in researching the topics he wrote on—would there be hints in OOS that would allow me to do this? An inquiring mind wanted to know.

Alas, after reading OSS, I can’t really say I know more about Darwin or the theory of evolution. I read the book slowly, away from the television and other distractions, so I can’t blame lack of concentration. I’ll blame the other things I mentioned a few paragraphs back. I think I understand what Darwin was saying, but, by today’s standards, I don’t think it develops the theory very well. It certainly has no references. Many times Darwin says something like, “Dr. Smith informed me of his research into….” The reader, unless a contemporary of Darwin in the science of that day, has no idea who Dr. Smith is, what his field of study is, and why he should be trusted. That’s not to say it’s wrong. It’s simply impossible to know the correctness of what Darwin is saying from Darwin’s book alone.

The subject matter in the book is far ranging. Darwin covers not just the gradual change in species from what they are to completely new species over thousands (or tens of thousands) of generations, but also the concept of mutations and hybrid species.

Still, I wasn’t very satisfied by the book. I think I would have to read this at least three times to understand it. Will I ever do so? Not with this book. It was somewhat damaged when I bought it as a used book, and started falling apart as I read it. It starts with a 70 page introduction, and the first 80 pages of the book have fallen out. It was a cheaply made, mass-market paperback. It’s not worth trying to sell at a garage sale nor donating to a thrift store. No, this particular book is going in the trash—not because of what it contains, but because of its physical condition. And, if I ever do want to read it, I can access it as a free e-book at Project Gutenberg.

Book Review: “More”

Two—or at most three—stars is the most I can give this.

Some time ago, in early in 2020, our church did an all-church study of the book More: Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure (2016, Zondervan) by Todd Wilson. The pastor preached on it and adult Life Groups were to study it. We were in the midst of the study of my book, Acts Of Faith, but decided to interrupt that and do the all-church study instead. I can’t be specific on the dates, as I can’t find all my teaching notes nor the little sheet I recorded my reading dates on. Maybe I saved all I had.

The book stemmed from conversations Wilson (who was a nuclear engineer who entered the pastorate and currently is an author of Christian ministry books, and a speaker) had with with a successful business man who didn’t feel fulfilled. That man wondered “Is this all there is? What is my purpose? What should I be doing to have the biggest impact?’

I found the book to be tedious. Wilson presents a formula, complete with diagrams. Those diagrams concern our “Be-Do-Go”. “Be” is our identity/design. “Do” is our mission/purpose. “Go” is our mission field/position. For each of these we primary or general calling and a secondary or unique personal calling. The general calling is something common to all Christians, and the unique calling is what God as specifically called each of us to do on earth in His kingdom.

Each week we were to do certain exercises and fill in a chart as we gained understanding on the general calling and tried to figure out our unique calling. I found those charts almost juvenile and had trouble asking our Life Group to fill them out. Consequently, I told them what the book wanted them to do and suggested the see if it worked for them. It didn’t work for me, though I’m not sure why.

With Wilson being an engineer I can understand why he reduces his teaching to diagrams. I kind of do the same. And you would think I would embrace his approach and love the book. But I don’t and didn’t. I won’t say I hated it, but for some reason it came up short with me. It was nicely organized and well written. You knew where he was going and he got there in a reasonable amount of time. It’s a fairly easy read. It’s just not my kind of book, that’s all I can say. I haven’t reviewed it on Amazon, and may or may not. If I do, I’ll give it only two stars, or maybe three.

Yet, it will stay on my shelf, for the possibility exists that I’ll read it again in a few years. Perhaps in a second reading it will seem better to me.

Book Review: Ten Little Indians

My version, a paperback from the 1960s, has a sanitized title, which was changed at least twice from the original Christie published it as.

As I finish reading one book and look through the thousands of books in the house to choose the next one(s) to read, of late I’ve been looking for books I not only want to read but that I can discard (through sale, donation, or trashing) when I’m done. A couple of months ago I found one of those in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. I wouldn’t have known where this book came from or how I obtained it had I not found in it a Christmas gift tag with my handwriting. I gave it to my sister some years ago, probably when we were teenagers. This particular printing was November 1964. It is a student copy, which suggests I bought it during my sister’s high school years.

I admit to this being my first Christie book to read. I’ve see a number of movies made from her books, but had until this never picked one up to read. That is now rectified, and the enjoyment I found from this volume guarantees I will read more of her writing.

Originally published in Christie’s native Great Britain in 1939 with a different title, a very vile title (that I won’t enter here) by today’s standards, it has sometimes been published in the USA with the title Ten Little Indians. Like Christie’s main writing, it’s a murder mystery. In this case, however, you don’t know if the murders are really murders, until the denouement.

Ten people are lured to an island off the southern coast of England named Indian Island. Ownership of the island is in question and the ten, as they are making their way there, have lots of questions about who owns it now. They are invited by a person they don’t know: U.N. Owen. Seven men and three women arrive on the island within a day or two of each other. Eight are guests, two are servants. All expect their host, Owen, to arrive soon. As they head towards the island, we get some backstory on several of them. For others, backstory comes out as the novel progresses.

In each guestroom is a poem, framed and hanging on the wall, titled “Ten Little Indians”. It’s a childhood diddy at least some of the guests recognize. On the table in the dining room are ten Indian figurines. The ten people meet for their first evening meal. After it the butler, following written instructions from Owen, who he’s never meant, puts on a phonograph record. It turns out to be a surprise, someone speaking (not music), who indicts each of the ten with a death they have caused in the past, saying that they would have to pay for it.

How each character pays for it comes out chapter by chapter. The first happens that night, as one of the guests dies of poisoning. Murder? Or suicide? The remaining nine speculate. An elderly judge who is a guest takes charge and “holds court,” trying to work the problem logically and find out what evidence they have. The guests all become suspicious of each other. Meanwhile, one of the Indian figurines disappears.

By the time Christie wrote this, standards for detective novels had changed in, say, the forty years since Doyle had given us Sherlock Holmes. Then, the means of solving the case wasn’t given in the writing. Since then, by Christie’s time it was expected. So in the novel should be the means for the reader to solve it, if you read closely.

I was close. As the ten, one by one, meet their untimely end, I came to the conclusion that one of the dead wasn’t dead but was really alive, but was only thought to be dead by the other guests/servants. I had a candidate, but it turned out I was wrong. I suspect, however, that if I read it over again, slowly, I would see that the right clues were there from the start. That’s probably impossible to do, given that I’ve read the Epilogue that explained it all. Re-reading it would be an interesting exercise.

I never will do it, though. The story and plot were good, the writing was good, it was an easy read, and I highly recommend it. But I have too many books in the house, too many I want to read, and thus have to be very picky about the ones I will re-read. No, this one will go to the get-rid-of pile as soon as I post this. Very glad I read it—actually I should say “we” read it, as my wife and I read it aloud together, the 183 pages plus some of the 32 page reader’s supplement in ten sittings—but it’s goodbye, ten little Indians. I hope another reader someday acquires you and derives the same pleasure from you that I did.

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice

When it was time to read “Pride and Prejudice”, I found one on the shelves in the living room, where my old, collectables are.

I know many of you have long ago read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Our son said he read it every year for a number of years. Well, both my wife and I had somehow not read it.

In early May the movie came on TV and we watched it. This was the 2005 version with Keira Knightly, Matthew Macfadyen, and Donald Sutherland. We found the story difficult to follow. Part of this was the English accents; part the overlapping talking by multiple characters in rapid-fire succession; part the sometimes low volume of the voices, such as when the Bennet girls were talking at balls. So, after watching the movie, we decided to read the book aloud in the evenings. We read from an older copy that has been in my family many years. Charles Westcott (“Uncle” Charlie), a good friend of my great-grand uncle David Sexton, gave it to my mother in 1934, according to the inscription. I don’t know if it originally had a dust jacket, but it doesn’t have one now.

This one was published in 1934 and was given to my mother by Charles Westcott, a good friend of her great uncle, David Sexton (who I’m named after).

I’m glad we read it.  Reading aloud is slower than reading silently. It took us twenty sittings over a month and a half to complete it. While the language is somewhat archaic, it is a classic that everyone should read. It has become a cultural icon. While I had heard of the title for years without thinking much about it, my attention was first drawn to it by the mentions in the movie You’ve Got Mail. Of course, I didn’t really understand what the Hanks and Ryan characters said about it. Next time I see that movie, I should understand it better.

Not a super old copy. Well, I guess 86 years old is fairly old. But it’s in good condition. I think I’ll keep it.

I don’t think there’s much point in my digging deeply into this classic, analyze the writing, or critique the plot and character development. Pride and Prejudice is much loved by millions. It has stood the test of time, and will be read and loved for at least another century. I hope to read it again sometime in the future. And to see the movie again. We watched it a second time right after reading the book. We were able to follow the plot, but I would really like to understand more of the dialog. Darn those British accents. Darn those silly little girls who all talk at once in hushed giggles. I fear I’ll never be able to understand it all.

This particular book is a keeper. It’s not exactly a collectable, as it’s a little too new, and it looks to have been somewhat of a mass-market hardback. But, it’s in excellent condition. To misquote Harry Potter, the binding is not fragile. It goes back on the shelf, this time next to Sense and Sensibility for easier future findability. I need to re-read that one some day.

Book Review: Bible Code II: The Countdown

The second of three books in the Bible Code series. I just learned that the author died in June 2020.

Having finished reading another book aloud (which I haven’t reviewed yet, but will), I suggested to Lynda that we next read Bible Code II. I did this because we had read Bible Code 1 years ago, the sequel was sitting next to it, and I thought we could read the second and put both out for sale or donation. She agreed, and we read it.

The author, Michael Drosnin, has taken the computer work of Israeli mathematician Dr. Eliyahu Rips and written popular books about a hidden code in the Hebrew version of the Bible. The first book dealt with codes in the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, also called the books of Moses. The second book extends into the entire Old Testament. In the first book, Drosnin explained that the Hebrew text of the Torah as settled. No one disputed the exact arrangement of letters and words. However, as he explained in BC:2, that isn’t the case with the rest of the Old Testament. Some Hebrew text is disputed.

How does the code in the Bible work? You skip letters on a fixed pattern and see what results. Skip every other letter. Do the letters then brought together form a word? No? Skip two consecutive letters, putting every third letter together instead of every other. Maybe those, somewhere in the continuous string of letters that make up the O.T., form words of phrases. Sometimes you look for the words forwards in the text, sometimes backwards, sometimes diagonally.

With hundred of thousands of words and even more letters, you have an almost infinite number of possible skip patterns, you have many, many places to look for encoded words. Isaac Newton was convinced such a code and spent years trying to find it. Dr. Rips, however, had computers. He figured out how to put the skip pattern in a table, then search the table for recognizable words. He found many such words, words that seemed to predict world events long after the Bible was written. In Bible Code 1 Drosnin described the process. In Bible Code II he expanded on it. As a control, they tried the same thing with other books of a similar lengths, and learned that these books did not form words or phrases in similar skip patterns in any meaningful way.

The conclusion: The Hebrew Old Testament contains a code that predicts future events. Who wrote the code? To the secular Drosnin that is unknown. To the devout Dr. Rips it had to be God.

The problem is that most events found in the code are found after the event happened. G.W. Bush is elected president? Break out your computer, search for “Bush” with an infinite number of skip patterns and you’ll find it. A few times, however, an event was found before it happened. The code seemed to predict the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and was found in 1994 and communicated to Rabin. The assassination happened—in 1995.

In the Bible Code 2, published in 2002, six years after the first book, the main premise is that a nuclear holocaust was going to happen; it would start in Jerusalem and result in annihilation of the Israelis and the Palestinians. Like other coded events, it was tied to a year, in this case 2006.

Yes, 2006. Fourteen years ago. A major part of the book was a warning that we must somehow prevent this from happening. In 2002 world conditions looked awful. Iran was angling to get the bomb. The Palestinians were in the midst of the second Intifada and Israel was aggressively resisting. The 9/11 attacks were fresh on everyone’s mind. We seemed to be in the age of terrorism in a new way.

Yet, no nuclear holocaust occurred in 2006, of in 2007, or in 2008, or any year since.

Is the Bible code real? I have no idea and have no way of judging if Rips and Drosnin are doing something valuable of are engaged in a well-meaning smoke-and-mirrors error. I do know that Drosnin’s work receives lots of criticism.

Should you buy the book and use your valuable time reading it? Probably not. It’s somewhat boring and quite repetitive. It’s actually a quick read since much of the book is diagrams of the code, in Hebrew with English translations. I intend to do a little investigation from my reading chair and see what these gentlemen have said in the intervening years. And see what others are saying about the Bible code and its validity. If there is a Bible Code III, however, I for sure won’t be reading it.

If you want to look at this further, Wikipedia has an excellent article on the Bible code.

Book Review: “Love Is Eternal”

My 1954 copy of this book has no dust jacket, and the spine is too faded to read. It came from my parent’s house. Without the dust jacket I can’t tell if it’s a first edition, though it was published in 1954.

Having finished a book back in March, and taking a lot of time working my way through my magazine pile, I also began glancing on my shelves for what to read next. I found two different non-fiction books that looked good and moved them from bookshelf to reading pile. It was really time for reading a novel, however, so I went back to the shelves.

In the garage, on a shelf that contains hundreds of books slated for donation or sale, I found a volume that looked intriguing. It’s Love Is Eternal by Irving Stone. The spine is worn on this 1954 print and I could hardly read the title on it. Opening to the title page I saw the subtitle is “A Novel About Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln”. Now that sounded interesting. Lincoln is my favorite president; he naturally featured prominently in my non-fiction Civil War book. So I took this from the shelf and decided it would be my next read.

I must interject here that I am not related to Mary Todd, at least not that I know. If I am, it’s more than eight generations back someplace in the Old World. I’ve never looked for a connection back there. I probably should.

464 pages and 36 sittings later and the book is read. Wow, that’s a long time you say. Yes, just under 13 pages per sitting. That was about all the time I felt like I could devote to reading during this period, as it included my intense research and writing of a family history book, my wife’s hospitalization, and a period much devoted to decluttering.  It wasn’t due to the book itself, but to life circumstances.

What a good book! Stone goes to great lengths to be faithful to the historical record. Based on the title I was expecting it to alternate between Abraham’s and Mary’s point of view, but it was all from Mary’s. That’s good, though unexpected. It shows Mary as a pampered southern belle, her daddy’s favorite. She socializes with all the important Kentucky politicians. She follows two sisters from Lexington KY to Springfield IL, where she will perhaps find a husband. She meets Stephen Douglas and other important men, but then meets Abraham Lincoln and others fade from her view.

Stone spends a lot of time on the early years, and progressively less on later years. All major events of Lincoln’s political career are covered, but in fewer words for the presidential years. I suspect Stone thought Lincoln’s presidency has been covered in great depth and that the early years needed more coverage. The book ends with Mary leaving the White House a few weeks after Lincoln’s death.

If I had to pick at some things that I didn’t like, I can find only two. First, I would have liked to have some data provided, perhaps a listing of the parents, siblings, and perhaps the grandparents of Abraham and Mary. What with parents, step-parents, siblings, half-siblings, step-siblings, etc, I sometimes was confused. For Mary, especially, being one of 16 siblings, I couldn’t keep them straight. A timeline for each of them would have helped, as would have a couple of simple maps, of Lexington and Springfield.

Second, I wish Stone hadn’t spent so much time on Mary’s clothes. He constantly talked about the gowns she wore, giving color and style. Who cares? I suppose that helped to develop her character and the situations she lived in, but it got kind of tiring after a while.

So, I pulled this book from the sale/donation pile, but is it really a keeper? I think my wife would enjoy it and I’m going to encourage her to read it. Meanwhile, from my deculttering and organizing work, I found two other Irving Stone books in my library about president’s wives: Those Who Love (Abigail Adams) and The President’s Lady (Rachel Jackson). I also have a first edition of his book They Also Ran, about those who ran for the presidency as nominees of their party but never won, which I read decades ago and remember it as being excellent. I also read (from a library copy) Stone’s 1980 book The Origin about Charles Darwin, also excellent. So, I think I’ll keep this and have a mini-collection of Irving Stone books. Whether I get to read them or not is another question.

Book Review: Mark Twain’s “Letters From Earth”

Twain’s miscellaneous writings published after his death: good to read but not worth keeping.

Some time ago I picked up a used copy of Letters From The Earth: Uncensored Writings By Mark Twain. Actually, I have another copy of this in the house which I saw while looking for something else on a bookshelf.

The book was pulled together posthumously by editors from writings Twain never published, things they found after he died. Like many authors, Twain started things, working toward some grand plan, then never finished them. Perhaps he realized the project didn’t make sense. Perhaps other things caught his interest. The editors found value in these writings and published it in 1938, more than twenty years after Twain’s death.

Thus, the book is a hodgepodge of materials, most of them dealing with religion and man, particularly relations between men and women. The Table of Contents is as follows.

  • Letters From The Earth
  • Papers of the Adam Family
  • Letter To The Earth
  • A Cat-Tale
  • Cooper’s Prose Style
  • Official Report to the I.I.A.S
  • The Gorky Incident
  • Simplified Spelling
  • Something About Repentance
  • From An English Notebook
  • From The Manuscript of “A Tramp Abroad”; the French and the Comanches
  • From an Unfinished Burlesque of Books on Etiquette
  • The Damned Human Race
  • The Great Dark

These vary in length from a few pages to fifty pages. Some I found interesting, if not illuminating. Some of his thoughts on women’s sexuality came from a different perspective and included things I’d never thought of. Some about sin and man’s relationship to God presented a skeptic’s or atheist’s viewpoint on Christianity. I don’t know if Twain was an atheist, but would conclude so just based on reading this book.

I found the article on James Fenimore Cooper’s writings overly critical. Cooper wrote a several decades before Twain began. Writing styles were different and had changed a lot in those years. This is the second piece I’ve read of Twain’s that pans Cooper. Not sure why Twain had it out for him.

I’m glad I read this as it tells me much more about Twain. I read almost all of it, skipping some of “The Great Dark” and most of the editor’s notes. I won’t be keeping it. Next time I leave The Dungeon for the Upper Realm, I’ll bring it with me and take it strait to the sale/donation pile. As a matter of fact, when I find that other copy of this somewhere on one of my many book shelves, it will go out as well. I’m not having a permanent Twain collection.

Book Review: The Commanders

An excellent read for anyone interested in the early historical accounts or the 1988-1991 era.

In our garage is a large bookshelf, scavenged years ago when the company was downsizing, that hold the books we trot out whenever we have a garage sale.  I finish a book, if it’s not a keeper, I bring it to the shelf and stuff it in somewhere.

As I did that recently, and looking for a new book to read, my eyes fell on The Commanders by Bob Woodward. I knew I’d never read it so pulled it from the shelf. It had belonged to my father-in-law, a book we brought back from his house after his death. The front page included a discussion of an illness he was going through, then in the book he had made much marginalia.

The book interested me because I understood it to be about Desert Storm, a time in history of special importance to me. I figured, knowing Woodward, it was an expose of everything our leaders did wrong. That turned out to false, however. It is more of a simple “here’s how our military operated in that point in time.”

Written mostly in 1989-90 and published in 1991, Woodward describes it as a mixture between journalism and history, a bit more history than newspaper accounts (because of the access he was given to principals) but not quite history with hindsight and full access to documents.

I found the book engaging and informative. The writing style is excellent.  Being ex-military, Woodward understands things such as chain of command, relationships between branches of the armed services, and how the military and civilian leadership of our defense establishment works. Being an investigative reporter he knows how to dig out the story.

And dig out the story he did. I won’t go into a lot of details, but Woodward gives us lots of information about Bush, Cheney, Powell, and others involved in using the military as part of our national security strategy. He seems to have had access to Colin Powell and possibly Dick Cheney. These two key figures feature prominently in the book.

Woodward doesn’t paint any one in a bad light in the book. He treats people fairly, explaining where they were, who they talked with, how they made decisions, how they dealt with the press during the run up to the Panama invasion in 1989 and the development of Desert Shield in 1990-91. It ends with the first few attacks the morning that Desert Storm hit an unbelieving Iraq on January 17, 1991.

This is a good book and I recommend it to anyone interested in the early historical accounts of the 1988-91 era. Is it a keeper? Alas, no. Not because of the quality, but because I have too many books and I don’t expect to ever read it again, nor do I expect my wife will want to read it or my future heirs will thank me for leaving it to them to deal with.

So, I will remove the page with the personal note, put that in my father-in-law’s papers, and put the book back in it’s slot on that bookshelf in the garage to await the next sale or donation. The next reader will just have to put up with his marginalia.

Book Review: Essays Presented to Charles Williams

This will become a part of my permanent library, an affectation that I could someday be an academic.

With C.S. Lewis being on of my favorite authors, I never pass up an opportunity to add something he’s written to my library. Some time ago I found a paperback titled Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C.S. Lewis, in a used book store. Needless to say I snatched it up. Having within the last year finally finished Mere Christianity after several previous failed attempts, I went to the bookshelf in the storeroom, hoping I would easily find this 145 page volume there, and sure enough it was right where I thought I remembered it to be.

The premise of the book was to honor Charles Williams, a member of the Oxford Inklings, the author critique group formed by Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. While Lewis and Tolkien were academics at Oxford, some others in the group weren’t. Lewis read one of Williams’ novels and liked it so much he wrote to him. At the same time, Williams, in his duties at the Oxford University Press, had just read Lewis’ The Allegory of Love, loved it, and was ready to write to Lewis. Mutual admiration of the other’s writings was the start of this friendship.

Lewis invited Williams to come to Oxford from London and visit the Inklings. He did so, and visited on occasion from 1936 to 1939. The outbreak of World War 2 caused the Oxford Press to temporary relocate from London to Oxford, at which time Williams became a regular member of the Inklings.

In 1945, as the war was ending, Lewis wanted to honor his friend and talked about putting a book of essays together, a typical way of doing honor in the literary world of that time. Alas, Williams died suddenly in 1945 before the project really started. Lewis persisted, however, and the book came together and was published in 1948. My paperback was the 4th printing, published in 1977.

Those contributing essays were Dorothy Sayers, Tolkien, Lewis, Owen Barfield, Gervase Mathew, and Lewis’ brother Warren. All except Sayers were part of the Inklings (well, Barfield not so much as he was based in London, but he was there occasionally and was a good friend of all of them).

The essays were literary in nature. Sayers’ “…And Telling you a Story”, Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories”, and Lewis’ “On Stories” are obviously about literature, specifically on story-telling. Barfield’s “Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction” fits in that category. Gervase’s “Marriage and Amour Courtois…” fits as well. Warren Lewis’ “The Galleys of France” doesn’t quite fit in with the others. It’s about what he learned from his research into 16th and 17th Century France, which was the topic of his writings.

Each of the essays I found to be a bit tedious, Warren and C.S. Lewis’ the least so, Tolkien’s the most (also the longest). In fact, I couldn’t get through Tolkien’s essay. I struggled with it, reading a few pages a day, reading slowly, trying to capture what Tolkien wanted to communicate. Alas, I finally gave up and skipped the last ten pages of 52-page essay and went on to the others. This is true of all of Tolkien’s writings for me. I have never completed reading The Lord Of The Rings due to how difficult I find it. I have The Sillmarillion waiting for me to get to, but I’m not excited about it.

Excited about getting to a book. That was my feeling when this finally popped to the top of my “reading pile”. It didn’t fulfill my expectations. Perhaps it’s because of the distance in time and space between 1948 England and 2019 United States. Perhaps it’s the academic nature of the essays. Perhaps it’s just that these authors knew what their friend would like and wrote in that way. Whatever it was, the book disappointed to some extent.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I bought the book, glad I read it, and will gladly give it a place in my permanent library. But, was this the best use of my valuable reading time? Perhaps not. Still, I can see myself going back to this a decade hence, re-reading it from cover to cover, somehow drawing meaning from Tolkien’s essay and finishing it, gaining more insight from the others on a second read. Maybe in those ten years I’ll make another post and you’ll get to read all about it.