Tag: Literature
Anthony Doerr's novel All the Light We Cannot See is one of those rare books that is actually difficult to put down. While most books that fit this category are white-knuckle thrillers that keep us reading because we need to know what happens next, All the Light We Cannot...
In 2012 I began teaching a course called “Christianity & the Arts,” and in 2014 I published a book on the same subject but directed specifically toward music, entitled Resonate: Enjoying God’s Gift of Music. In the process of researching for both the class and the book, I ended...
Last week we looked at C. S. Lewis’ thoughts on what makes a good reader and what makes a good book. Today I want to close off that series by examining Lewis’ thoughts on fiction.
I don’t believe it’s too much to say that Lewis found fiction indispensible to his...
We all want to read good books and avoid bad ones. But how do we know the difference? C. S. Lewis helps us here.
In An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis proposes that what makes a book good or bad is the type of reading it invites. He begins by stating...
What makes a good reader? With C. S. Lewis’ help, we have already exposed “the unliterary,” “the status seeker,” and “the devotee of culture” as poor readers. But what makes a good reader?
Lewis explains that a good reader has a much different experience with a book than a poor...
Yesterday we looked at two of Lewis’ categories of poor readers: the unliterary (a broad category of those who merely use books to get at ideas) and the status seeker (who reads so he can talk about—or boast about, really—what he’s read). But Lewis’ list gets more interesting. And...
I have learned that whenever C. S. Lewis weighs in on a subject, I’d better pay attention. He’s not always right, of course, but he is always wise and thought provoking. This is true of everything that Lewis wrote on anything. But when it comes to Lewis writing about...
The (secular) college I attended for my undergrad offered classes on the Bible as literature. I (along with most in my circle of Christian friends) avoided these like the plague. How could I study the Bible as literature? It is literally God’s word. It comes with his power and...