The Love of Books

Life slows down, and so do the posts. When you do pretty much the same thing everyday, there's less to say about it. A large part of what I've been doing lately is reading of various sorts. My Whitefield courses involve a lot of reading, mostly of a theological sort. While Berkhof and Pink and other theology books are good for me, I have to say it's not what I love to read. Some things we do because we have to, and others because we love to. What I really love is fiction. So, while I've been pushing myself through my school books, I've been devouring a novel in my spare time. Most recently I read A Tale of Two Cities. It's bad, I know, but I hadn't read a Dickens novel before, so I didn't really know what he was like. I was pretty impressed with him, from what I saw in this novel. I really liked the way he developed the characters--by the end you really feel attached (or repulsed) by the different ones. Some parts are rather gruesome, though, so it's not exactly family-friendly.

Before Two Cities, I was re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia. Our Grandma Grove read them to us when we were younger, so I've had fond feelings for them for a long time, but I never re-read them on my own before. I love C. S. Lewis's other novels, and I enjoyed going back through and picking out the deeper themes that I hadn't caught when I was younger. I also found myself trying to picture how the later books would look as movies. I'm starting to wonder if the movie makers will really be able to do the whole series. I'm pretty sure they will not be able to catch Lewis's vision in them, even if they do.

Well, I hope that wasn't too boring. Maybe I'm feeling an unconscious need to continue writing the book reports I had been writing for years. Anyway, now you know what I've been doing instead of blogging.