Posted on 12/20/2010 6:57:54 PM PST by roses of sharon
Since Katie Couric first asked the question a couple of years back, journalists continue to pepper Sarah Palin with that classic ice-breaker: "So, what are you reading?" The subject came up again in a recent profile in the New York Times Magazine, and last week Barbara Walters returned to the question in interviewing Mrs. Palin as one of her "10 most fascinating people of 2010."
In both interviews Mrs. Palin cited C.S. Lewis as a favorite author she looks to for inspiration. This prompted talk-show host and comedienne Joy Behar of "The View" to deride Mrs. Palin and her choice of reading, asking: "Aren't those children's books?"
Lewis would likely have appreciated making Mrs. Palin's reading list. But he probably would have appreciated the questions about it even more. For Lewis, one of the best ways to know a person was to know what they read. He was convinced that books defined us and shaped our character.
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Mrs. Palin is on the right track by giving C.S. Lewis a prominent place on her reading list. Yet Ms. Behar and other Palin critics have dismissed Lewis's work, forgetting that Lewis was a medieval and renaissance scholar at Oxford and the author of several brilliant Christian apologetics. Ms. Behar's dismissal of children's books as less than important makes her a modern-day Eustace, the type of bully who mocks readers of fairy tales as simpletons.
Lewis thought quite the opposite. He thought that fairy tales were the best way to convey truth for children and adults alike. He wrote about this quite often in his letters, and took no shame in reading fairy tales out loud in British pubs with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the epic "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I rewatch Shadowlands twice a year.
Fantastic, Palin is a C.S. Lewis fan, she just went up another notch and she was already near the bell anyway. What a great lady! And what a surprise..NOT!
That’s my favorite C.S. Lewis Quote. Lewis is dismissed because of his effectiveness. He was expert at using his own self reflection as well as his surgical style of reasoning in his writing. The appeal of Lewis to me is his brutal honesty with himself. ‘A Grief Observed’ was a particularly moving book. I found very interesting that a man that was so matter of fact was so good at writing ‘Fairytales’.
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” -— C. S. Lewis
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Critical thinking that is well beyond the wonks of the liberal MSM. She will make a very valuable contribution to the upcoming election, regardless of what she decides to do. We need a hundred more like her, for starters.
And they could not have picked a better actor to play Lewis than Anthony Hopkins.
She can read?
LOL! She will make very tasty demon food.
“Shadowlands” was far more than a Hollywood movie.
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I think so...it’s one of my favorite movies.
“Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I’ve been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.”
Doubtless only the trite, the trivial, and the terribly grown-up (after the manner of the apostate Queen Susan of Narnia), the sort of stuff suited to reading only by those whose intellect is the result of the decayed education that Lewis's The Abolition of Man set out to decry on its way to becoming a prophecy of the whole state of Western culture at the turn of the 21st Christian century.
Behar’s list probably includes a bathroom wall.
“His book “Mere Christianity” is classic... and read and reread in my home.”
His letters to Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers (aside from her Lord Peter Whimsey’s Novels, which are my favorites, a very serious writer) a brilliant man and communicator, he is terrific to read. His letters are fascinating. From the sounds of it you are probably already familiar with them;
C. S. Lewis was a prolific letter writer, and his personal correspondence reveals much of his private life, reflections, friendships, and the progress of his thought. This second of a three-volume collection contains the letters Lewis wrote after his conversion to Christianity, as he began a lifetime of serious writing. Lewis corresponded with many of the twentieth century’s major literary figures, including J. R. R. Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers. Here we encounter a surge of letters in response to a new audience of laypeople who wrote to him after the great success of his BBC radio broadcasts during World War II — talks that would ultimately become his masterwork, Mere Christianity.”
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Collected-Letters-C-S-Lewis-Box-Set-C-S-Lewis/?isbn=9780060882280
“Behar’s list probably includes a bathroom wall.”
Just reading, or writing her phone number?
Behar’s list probably includes a bathroom wall.
Great line! LOL
By the way; that little boy, Douglas Gresham, went on to start a ministry of his own. Back in the late 80s or early 90s they had him as a guest on The 700 Club. I have that segment of the show on a VHS tape somewhere.
He said that it was a joy to be with them when Lewis and his mother Joy were married. He said both of them were so intelligent they used to play Scrabble in several languages at once. (I could do that....in vulgarity, profanity and English). Doug said that in his late teens he rebelled, got into drugs, etc., but eventually surrendered to Christ, and later started a ministry, in Australia or New Zealand, if I’m not mistaken.
A powerful declaration!
Just stunning! WOW!!
You flatter her. She probaby reads People and the National Enquirer.
So do I at the beauty shop.
His sci fi trilogy is excellent also.
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