Tag Archives: literature

The Reading Life

Posted on November 23, 2021 by smellincoffee

The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds through Others’ Eyes © 2019 C.S. Lewis 192 pages One of the reasons I’ve grown so fond of Jack Lewis over the years is that he and I share some of … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics and Literary, Reviews | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

CS Lewis, a reader’s gift to readers

Posted on November 8, 2021 by smellincoffee

Recently, while slogging through a dull but sometimes promising book, I turned to Lewis for help: relieve me, Jack, from the tedium of Nazi economics! He delivered, though my review will wait until the Lewis-themed week coming up in a … Continue reading →

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The book as a squarish chunk of hot smoking conscience

Posted on November 1, 2019 by smellincoffee

In autumn of 2017, The New Criterion published an article about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “cathedrals“, his Gulag Archipelago and a series of epic ‘novels’ known as the Red Wheel series. I delayed posting this until I was finished with the trilogy, … Continue reading →

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Short rounds: things that are not Star Trek, like North Koreans and Aeneas

Posted on May 5, 2018 by smellincoffee

Believe it or not, I have been reading books without a Star Trek label appended to them this week. Just recently I finished off Don’t Go There, a short collection of travel pieces that interested me with its mention of visits to … Continue reading →

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A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War

Posted on April 12, 2018 by smellincoffee

A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War © 2014 Joseph Loconte 256 pages When some future Gibbon writes of the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization, he will have to devote a great deal of attention to the Great … Continue reading →

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Further Up and Further In

Posted on April 10, 2018 by smellincoffee

Further Up and Further In: Understanding Narnia © 2018 Joseph Pearce 200 pages ”The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets.” – The Last Battle Christendom and Narnia are never far removed from one another, … Continue reading →

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Unfinished Business, 2017 Edition

Posted on December 31, 2017 by smellincoffee

Every year a few books will slip through the cracks, and become read but un-reviewed. Sometimes books are so good I keep pondering them until the thought of writing about them has slipped my mind; other times, the books are too … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews, science fiction | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Republic of Imagination

Posted on September 7, 2017 by smellincoffee

The Republic of Imagination: America in Three BooksOther edition subtitle: A Case for Fiction© 2014 Azar Nafisi352 pages When Azar Nafisi taught literature in Iran, she dreamed of America. Not the United States, the government of which had been making … Continue reading →

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Rousseau and Revolution

Posted on August 2, 2017 by smellincoffee

Rousseau and Revolution© 1957 Will and Ariel Durant1092 pages “…little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of … Continue reading →

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Surprised by Joy

Posted on March 20, 2017 by smellincoffee

Surprised by Joy© 1955 C.S. Lewis252 pages “When I first read Chesterton, I did not know what I was in for. God is, if I may say it,  quite unscrupulous.” Mention the name C.S. Lewis and the image of a … Continue reading →

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