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The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics

C. S. Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 78 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Awesome book. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I have not finished reading the whole thing, but I have read three of the books included already. This man was a genius.

Wonderful Investment 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

An awesome, moving, collection of books. I am a changed man for reading his works.

This book is HUGE! 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I usually know when my husband is asleep when he drops his book, which usually lands on my head. As he climbed in bed with this HUGE text-book sized book, he said to me, "Been nice knowin' ya."
It's neat to have all CS Lewis' books together in one place, but this thing really is huge. Too heavy to hold to read comfortably unless you're at a desk and it's laying flat. Or maybe if you're sitting up and it can lay in your lap. But for snuggly bedtime reading, no go. (Except it will put you to sleep since it takes so much concentration to understand Lewis' deepth of thinking.)

Editorial Review:

Seven Spiritual Masterworks by C. S. Lewis

This classic collection includes C. S. Lewis's most important spiritual works:

Mere Christianity
The Screwtape Letters
The Great Divorce
The Problem of Pain
Miracles
A Grief Observed
The Abolition of Man

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1764 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

Harper Lee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

to kill a mocking bird 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 6 people found this review helpful.

A good book but not as good as the movie. The exact ending as to how the attacker was killed left too much doubt as to who actually was the killer--I don't think this was a good way to end the book. If Boo actually was the killer it should have been clearer to the reader instead of making the reader play a guessing game.

Editorial Review:

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South -- and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred

One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis of an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father -- a crusading local lawyer -- risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Anne Lamott

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 305 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Book that Resonates 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Anne Lamott writes with tremendous vulnerability and sincerity. She opens her veins for us and spills the contents of her life onto the page--the good, the bad, and the very very ugly. Her words are raw and evocative.

I must say that while this book resonates with many people, including myself, who have been hurt by life, disillusioned by the church, and a bit angry at things, I did not come away feeling closer to any tangible answers. I didn't think her crass and vulgar language added much to her message. It was kindof distracting, and I felt like taking a shower after wading through it.

My generation is craving something more--something deeper. We want real answers for real problems. While I continue to read Lamott, I would not say this is her best work.

Shameless plug--check out my new book Sex, Sushi, and Salvation: Thoughts on Intimacy, Community, and Eternity

Editorial Review:

Anne Lamott admits that she's "ever so slightly more anxious than the average hypochondriac." When faced with a small, irregular mole and a family history of skin cancer, however, she remembers her faith in God and enjoys some peace--despite behaving "a little more like Nathan Lane in The Birdcage than I would have hoped." Author Lamott reads these wonderfully detailed postcards from her meandering journey to faith. With sharp and bittersweet humor, she recounts a past full of bad relationships with men, with food, with drugs, with alcohol, and worst of all, with herself. She battles her demons thanks to the love of her friends and family and her "lurch of faith" to embrace religion, that "puzzling thing inside me that had begun to tug on my sleeve from time to time, trying to get my attention." Inspiring but not dogmatic, Traveling Mercies is a treasure. (Running time: 4 hours, 3 cassettes) --C.B. Delaney

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

C.S. Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 188 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Beyond Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I went into this book not knowing what to expect; I'd never even heard of it before. The first time I read it, it blew my mind. The second time, it struck me in different ways, all just as powerful and intriguing. I can safely say that this is one of my favorite books of all time.

The story follows the "ugly sister" of the Eros/Psyche myth -- the one who seeks to destroy Psyche's happiness in the original fairytale. Here, the myth gains new life as it is stripped of its fairytale trappings and set into a realistic world. In short, it explains why the myth is the way it is, and at the same time it is an engaging tale of the true nature of "love."

Just thinking about what Lewis manages here is amazing enough. I don't think I've ever read a book that so effortlessly entwines 1) an engaging story, 2) a strong allegory, 3) a philosophical treatise, 4) beautiful character development (beautiful characterization all 'round!), and best of all, 5) pure entertainment. Most incredibly, Till We Have Faces effortlessly "instructed" me -- one of those rare books that left me looking at my own character and my relationships with other people. Anyone 13 and up can enjoy it -- the writing style is sharp and concise, communicates much with very few words, delivers some wonderful turns of phrase, and in general is very earthy and strong and rich. In my mind, Lewis is easily a master of the genre.

This is not a "perfect" retelling of the Eros/Psyche myth and takes some liberties by focusing only on the ugly sister, but it only serves to emphasize the meaning behind the myth. In fact, I find the story far more engaging because of its altered focus. Don't be fooled... the Psyche myth is here, and it's absolutely integral; this book is all about the myth and how it reflects Orual's life. It's running inbetween the lines if one would care to look for it. In fact, I much preferred reading about the far more complex and interesting character of Orual (the ugly sister) than her sweet and perfect sister Psyche who, in my opinion, was annoying.

There are only two reasons I can think of that would turn off the potential reader. Firstly, it may be boring if you dislike reading about somebody's daily life. If such exposition is painful for you, you'll probably hate this book. That said, the way Lewis described the daily life of these ancient people brought the entire culture alive for me. The second way you might find it painful is if you dislike having thick philosophy stirred in -- and the allegory/philosophy comes to a head near the end of the book in such a way that will spin an unprepared reader's head. The first time I read this I had to read it about three times and I still didn't get it. The second time it was much clearer, but obviously Lewis was an excellent philosopher, which I am not.

One can enjoy this book on its superficial level and come away feeling oddly relaxed and good at the end, even without completely understanding why. And if you dare to dig deeply, you will get more than you know what to do with. Lewis found it important to really know what one was saying -- to say what one really meant, one should get at the foundation of a word. If you want to get some extra oomph out of your reading, if you want to expand your mind and your understanding about the integral concept of "love," this is the book for you. If you want an entertaining ride, the book is this, too.

I do not understand why it doesn't have any more critical acclaim; perhaps its Christian allegory is part of this, in which case it is a shame. This book manages what most "artsy" books can almost never claim: it is entertaining at the same time that it is thought-provoking.

Editorial Review:

This tale of two princesses - one beautiful and one unattractive - and of the struggle between sacred and profane love is Lewis’s reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche and one of his most enduring works.

Out of the Silent Planet (Space Trilogy, Book One)

C.S. Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 161 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Clever sci-fi AND a compelling allegory! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Elwin Ransom, an Oxford don and an ardent philologist, is enjoying a solitary cross country ramble on his vacation when he encounters Professor Devine, a long-time acquaintance from his student days at Oxford, and Weston, a somewhat distracted and grumpy, reclusive individual. Weston is, in fact, a physicist who has secretly built a space craft in which he and Devine plan to return to Mars (Malacandra, in the native Martian populace's language) with nefarious ideas of plunder and planetary domination. As part of their plan, they drug and kidnap Ransom to take him along as a sacrificial peace offering to the native population.

On the face of it, a beautifully written Out of the Silent Planet has a simple classic sci-fi plot and can certainly be enjoyed at this level. But virtually every reader will recognize that Lewis' work probes far more deeply than that. His strongly held Christian beliefs, never far from that surface plot, are apparent in his criticism of human prejudice and greed. It is also clear that he holds extremely strong views against notions of eugenics and the then universally held belief in the natural supremacy of western white civilization as compared, for example, to aboriginal populations elsewhere in the world. Even though his allegorical tale goes so far as to include a version of angels and an archangel, the story never becomes preachy, odious or whiny.

Astute long-time readers of science fiction are always on the alert for errors of scientific fact. So Lewis may be mildly criticized for making a fundamental error in how gravity would work aboard a space craft but this certainly detracts in no way from the quality of his story. To the contrary, I thought he earned top marks and high praise for crafting, for example, a startlingly accurate description of the appearance of the sky in the transition zone from atmosphere to space at extremely high altitudes (at a time, of course, when space travel was at best a twinkle in scientists' eyes). I also noted a single quite astonishing comment that seemed to predict Einstein's work on cosmology, travel at light speed and relativity ... "But if the movement were faster still ... in the end, the moving thing would be in all places at once." His brief exposition on linguistics and the possibility of a universal syntactical structure of languages was also fascinating without being distracting or pedantic.

For fans of soft sci-fi, Out of the Silent Planet will provide a smorgasbord of delights - alien characters and personalities, philosophy, ethics, survival in a potentially hostile environment and descriptions of alien flora and fauna that are near poetic in their beauty and majesty. I'm looking forward to reading the next novels in his masterwork trilogy, "Voyage to Venus" and "That Hideous Strength".

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

Editorial Review:

The first book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which continues with Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, Out of the Silent Planet begins the adventures of the remarkable Dr. Ransom. Here, that estimable man is abducted by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice and taken via spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra. The two men are in need of a human sacrifice, and Dr. Ransom would seem to fit the bill. Once on the planet, however, Ransom eludes his captors, risking his life and his chances of returning to Earth, becoming a stranger in a land that is enchanting in its difference from Earth and instructive in its similarity. First published in 1943, Out of the Silent Planet remains a mysterious and suspenseful tour de force.

The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre

H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 136 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I was hoping for something actually....scary 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 17 people found this review helpful.

I have been a fan of horror movies and video games for quite some time, but reading was not typically my thing, however, I decided to check out a horror story or two and Lovecraft was recommended. This was my first and last Lovecraft purchase and I will explain why.
I have read 11 of the 16 stories and at the end of most of them I was fairly irritated that I had spent the time reading such a story. Some of the plot lines are ridiculously laughable: an invisible monster, an unseen force that is afraid of the light, fish people, a "rat-like being" named Brown Jenkin (weird name for a lame creature), and many many more. I was never scared while reading these stories and whenever I thought something horrifying would happen there was only sheer disappointment.
"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" was my favorite of the stories, however, it fell flat on its face in the last pages. There were some creepy happenings like when the hotel door was being tried with a key and the like, but the climax, the immortal terror of the deep that was so incredibly horrifying was....FISH PEOPLE. You read it right, how can anyone be afraid of fish people? It's absurd. Finally, just when you think things would get interesting, the main character faints in the middle of the night, thereby cutting the story short as if Lovecraft simply got too tired of writing it. This brings me to my next point.
Lovecraft is creative, yet uncreative at the same time. To be sure some of his descriptions are very intricate, but there are times when it is SO detailed that I cannot comprehend what he is trying to describe ("dreams in the witch house" for example, the starfish headed things, I couldn't put it together). On the other hand, sometimes he leaves out so much detail that the subject cannot possibly be found scary, a strong example of this is "Pickman's Model". The creatures said to make the main character scream are only described as being hunched over, canine like, and having half-hoven feet. A lot of the descriptions he uses constantly are that creatures of settings are made up of geometry not of this world, or they would not possibly be comprehended, or some other adjective that makes it utterly impossible to recreate the story in your head. This is irritating because how can you be scarred of something that you can't even picture like a gas (Colour from outer space), and invisible monster (Dunwich Horror), or so many of the others. The plots also have lapses in logical thought, for example, in the "Dream in the Witch House" the main character kicks Brown Jenkin down a cliff, yet in the next page the creature is right behind him, and on the NEXT page it is down at the bottom of the cliff again, it doesn't add up. Most of Lovecraft's stories spend most of the time building up to a climax, however, said climax is only a sentence or two long and you are left feeling cheated. A strong example of this is in "Call of Cthulu" where the sailors discover the tomb of the elder god and awaken it. Cthulu is obviously an important Lovecraft "character" so you would expect it would be a large part of this story, but you would be wrong. Cthulu kills around 4 sailors in one sentence with flabby claws and it is unexplained how it does so. I waited the entire story to read about how it ate them or ripped them apart or something, but when it really counted Lovecraft was devoid of description. Finally the creature chases the remaining two sailors on their ship and, get this, gets sealed back in the tomb because they run into its head with the boat. The one story where Cthulu actually appears and it is only for half a page, how ridiculous.
Please heed this warning and look past the majority of 5 star rating, Lovecraftian fanatics.

Editorial Review:

Lovecraft is "the American writer of the twentieth century most frequently compared with Poe, in the quality of his art ... [and] its thematic preoccupations (the obsessive depiction of psychic disintegration in the face of cosmic horror)," writes Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Review of Books. Del Rey has reprinted Lovecraft's stories in three handsome paperbacks. This first volume collects 16 classic tales, including "The Rats in the Walls," "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Dunwich Horror," and "The Colour Out of Space." Introduction by Robert Bloch. Wraparound cover art by Michael Whelan.

Einstein's Dreams

Alan Lightman

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Total reviews: 209 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

If you liked the eerie whimsy of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Steven Millhauser's Little Kingdoms, or Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths, you will love Alan Lightman's ethereal yet down-to-earth book Einstein's Dreams. Lightman teaches physics and writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helping bridge the light-year-size gap between science and the humanities, the enemy camps C.P. Snow famously called The Two Cultures.

Einstein's Dreams became a bestseller by delighting both scientists and humanists. It is technically a novel. Lightman uses simple, lyrical, and literal details to locate Einstein precisely in a place and time--Berne, Switzerland, spring 1905, when he was a patent clerk privately working on his bizarre, unheard-of theory of relativity. The town he perceives is vividly described, but the waking Einstein is a bit player in this drama.

The book takes flight when Einstein takes to his bed and we share his dreams, 30 little fables about places where time behaves quite differently. In one world, time is circular; in another a man is occasionally plucked from the present and deposited in the past: "He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future ... he is forced to witness events without being part of them ... an inert gas, a ghost ... an exile of time." The dreams in which time flows backward are far more sophisticated than the time-tripping scenes in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, though science-fiction fans may yearn for a sustained yarn, which Lightman declines to provide. His purpose is simply to study the different kinds of time in Einstein's mind, each with its own lucid consequences. In their tone and quiet logic, Lightman's fables come off like Bach variations played on an exquisite harpsichord. People live for one day or eternity, and they respond intelligibly to each unique set of circumstances. Raindrops hang in the air in a place of frozen time; in another place everyone knows one year in advance exactly when the world will end, and acts accordingly.

"Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic," writes Lightman. "Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting.... In this world, artists are joyous." In another dream, time slows with altitude, causing rich folks to build stilt homes on mountaintops, seeking eternal youth and scorning the swiftly aging poor folk below. Forgetting eventually how they got there and why they subsist on "all but the most gossamer food," the higher-ups at length "become thin like the air, bony, old before their time."

There is no plot in this small volume--it's more like a poetry collection than a novel. Like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, it's a mind-stretching meditation by a scientist who's been to the far edge of physics and is back with wilder tales than Marco Polo's. And unlike many admirers of Hawking, readers of Einstein's Dreams have a high probability of actually finishing it.

A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works

C. S. Lewis

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Beloved author C. S. Lewis is our trusted guide in this intimate day-by-day companion offering his distinctive and celebrated wisdom. Amidst the bustle of our daily experience, A Year with C. S. Lewis provides the necessary respite and inspiration to meet the many challenges we face in our lives. Ruminating on such themes as the nature of love, the existence of miracles, overcoming a devastating loss, and discovering a profound faith, Lewis offers unflinchingly honest insight for each day of the year.

These daily meditations have been culled from Lewis's celebrated Signature Classics: Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and A Grief Observed, as well as from the distinguished works The Weight of Glory and The Abolition of Man.

Throughout this elegant daybook the reader will find poignant biographical com-mentary about C. S. Lewis's life that offers a remarkable portrait of Lewis in the context of his work. As each day unfolds, we embark on a path of discovery with a friend by your side. A Year with C. S. Lewis is the perfect com-panion for everyone who cherishes Lewis's timeless words.

Perelandra (Space Trilogy, Book 2)

C.S. Lewis

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Total reviews: 90 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The best of the series 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy is easily one of the best series I've ever read, and while each volume is so strong that it's difficult to choose the best, Perelandra, the second book, builds well on the foundation laid by Out of the Silent Planet and, in the end, outshines the final book, That Hideous Strength.

The story begins as Lewis, writing himself into his own story, arrives in the English countryside to visit his old friend Dr. Ransom, with whom he has been corresponding about Ransom's strange journey to Mars, chronicled in the first book of the series. When Lewis arrives, Ransom reveals that the eldils--angelic creatures bound to different planets--of Mars have continuously visited him since his return to Earth, and that he is to leave on another journey that very night. Boxed up in an otherworldly, coffin-like capsule, Ransom is whisked away and doesn't return for over a year. When he does, he narrates his story through Lewis.

Perelandra is the actual name of what we call the planet Venus, and when Ransom crashes through the dense, cloudy atmosphere he finds himself in a world of nothing but ocean, where floating islands of matted plants drift along, providing a place for rest and sleep. There, he meets the Queen of Venus, a green-skinned, naked woman apparently innocent of all knowledge except that told directly to her by Maleldil, or God. She knows the animals and their names, that her husband, the King, is somewhere on the same planet, and that Maleldil has forbidden them both to spend the night on solid land.

Ransom decides that he has been brought to a new Eden, but for what purpose? His question is answered when a familiar-looking spaceship lands on Perelandra and Dr. Weston, the Nietzschean nemesis of Out of the Silent Planet, rows ashore. Weston soon plays host to a devilish tempter and Ransom's duty becomes clear--he must prevent this Eden's fall.

Perelandra is a tour de force for C.S. Lewis. All of his skills are on display and sharply focused--the beautifully-drawn world, the deep resonance of his message and theme, and even the wry, good-natured humor that underlies so much of his work. And the work is far deeper than most scientific or theological fiction--parallels to his own works, such as The Screwtape Letters, and works like Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy abound. Those to Paradise Lost are perhaps the most pointed, as Lewis dethrones Milton's concept of a high, stately Satan and replaces it with the far more likely childish, vindictive devil that inhabits Weston.

The Space Trilogy is very loosely constructed, which means that any one of the books can be read as either part of the series or as stand-alone entertainment. It may not be necessary to read Out of the Silent Planet prior to this novel, but I'd recommend it and, if you choose not to, you'll want to once you've finished Perelandra. You won't be disappointed.

Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

The second book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which also includes Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength, Perelandra continues the adventures of the extraordinary Dr. Ransom. Pitted against the most destructive of human weaknesses, temptation, the great man must battle evil on a new planet -- Perelandra -- when it is invaded by a dark force. Will Perelandra succumb to this malevolent being, who strives to create a new world order and who must destroy an old and beautiful civilization to do so? Or will it throw off the yoke of corruption and achieve a spiritual perfection as yet unknown to man? The outcome of Dr. Ransom's mighty struggle alone will determine the fate of this peace-loving planet.