Technically I Lied

About reading one book twice then moving on.

I still intend on reading every book this year twice (in fact, I’ve already read two twice this year so far).  But I still am going to be reading two books at a time.  A bibliophile needs variety in his life, you know.

So I just finished reading C. S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet over the weekend and am now half-way through the re-read.  What a great book!  I had read it twenty or twenty-five years ago and was only so-so about it, but my spiritual maturity was, well, startlingly immature at that time.  I also had thought that I’d read the entirety of Lewis’s Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) at the time, but the more I investigate the less sure I am of that feat.

I browsed a local library with a big used book sale annex as well as my local B&N, but neither had neither of the two remaining novels in the trilogy.  I went online today but my reliable used book internet site was schizoid (perhaps it just doesn’t like the Chrome on my work PC).  Maybe tonight at home I’ll again try to order them online, because I need to know how this ends.

Ever get that feeling?

In the meantime, I think I will read through John Milton’s Paradise Lost next.  Have it as part of the Great Books collection, and made a stilted, stunted effort ten or twelve years ago without success.  The time feels right, right now, that is, so I will give it a go once Silent Planet’s second go-through has been gone through.  And, of course, a review will follow (of both Lewis’s book and Milton’s epic poem, if I may be so bold as to “review” such great literary works; perhaps some “thoughts on x” might be a better label).

Oh, and I just finished Fulton Sheen’s Life of Christ, begun on January 10.  Roughly four weeks.  Plus another four weeks for the re-read, which will put me smack in the heart of Lent.  And for my Lenten reading – well, I have that all picked out, and will let you know when I get there.  Please, no holding of breaths; it, too, will be a spiritual work, one that I last visited when Little One was a newborn.

Read well!  Read good!