One last book for the year!

I was able to squeeze one last review in before the year is up. Even better, it’s a book that’s been languishing on my TBR list. Hooray! I have some goals for 2018, and it’s nice to really trim the to-read pile significantly. This is an author well familiar to me, though I’ve never finished this book until now.

C.S. Lewis is perhaps best known for his Narnia fantasy books, but he’s also an academic and Christian apologist. Mere Christianity is a defense of Christianity in post-war, postmodern society where the question, Does any of this matter? prevails. The book is divided into several parts, which include both the theology and the lifestyle of Christianity. The latter part has to be read in context of time period and author biography, because there are some…startling, shall we say…ideas about marriage (having read the Space Trilogy, I was not surprised, but it’s a little surreal to read in 2017). I mean, that’s kind of the deal with Lewis, though. He is well-intentioned, buuuuuuut a little sexist in his thinking.

If you are a fan of Lewis the fantasy writer, this takes a very different tone than what you might expect. If, however, you like Lewis’s more academic work, this fits neatly into that genre. You might philosophically disagree with his conclusions, but he engages the defense for Christianity well. Since I was not necessarily looking to defend my own faith or reading it in a moment of questioning, I didn’t glom onto that part. But it may prove useful at another point in life. Lewis’s work is interesting and engaging, and his use of logic works well in discussing the “God” part of us all that engages with some form of spirituality.

And that’s a wrap on 2017. See you all for CBR10. I’ve got two book club picks to read first and then a read-through of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series on deck first.

Cross-posted to my blog.