So* I was watching the Narnia trailer, and thought to myself " I should really get my hands on copies of the books". The only one I've read is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Fast Forward:
I'm in my local Borders looking for a good summer read, and what do I find? All seven chronicles neatly packaged in one paperback special edition. I love convenient things!
In other news, I underwent my first driving lesson today. It went well, but I'm a little hard on the brakes. I'll get used to it.
Posts: 1401 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Good luck driving. Where exactly are you practicing -- I want to know where to avoid.
And, in my opinion, Lion, Witch, Wardrobe is the best of those books. After reading enough of them, I just couldn't bear it any more. I felt like I was getting hit on the head with a tea kettle.
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If I told you where I was practicing it would ruin the surprise!
I'm about half way through The Magician's Nephew right now. I can already tell that these arent going to be as good as L,W,W.
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In all honesty, I think that LWW is the most boring of the lot. You can really tell he hadn't come into his style with that one. The only one that I like less is Prince Caspian. All the others just get better and better, IMHO (that is, if you read them in the order they were written).
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Right..it is harder if you read them out of order.
I like the series a lot, but some of the books just didn't connect with me at all, not really. I LOVED the others though, which more than made up for it IMO.
I can't wait to see the movie!
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Magician's Nephew is my least favorite. LWW is one of the best, but then I think a lot of that is because I've always heard so many good things about it.
Silver Chair is okay, not my favorite. But I love the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I really liked A Horse and his Boy.
Prince Caspian was okay, but not my favorite, and the Last Battle is just, weird.
I bought the same 7 book all in one book thing a month ago. It's handy. I blew through the whole thing in like two days.
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Yeah..Thinking of it as one big book makes it a lot easier than saying "Ok, only 6 more books to go".
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The Magicians Nephew is the worst in my opinion so don't give up. My favorite is definantly the voyage of the Dawn Treader. I've read it like six times.
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Prince Caspian made me stop reading them the first time. I almost fell asleep. Then I started reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and it wasn't much better. I'm ashamed to say I haven't actually finished the series. But The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was amazing, and got me totally into it at first.
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If I recall correctly, The Magician's Nephew was actually written some time after the rest of the series was completed - to me, that always explained the different tone.
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I just finished rereading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time since.. well a long time.
It was alright... for a childrens book. I dunno I just didn't like it as much as I used to. I'd forgotten just how much it was written for little kids. There were some parts I really liked, and I loved the world and the story and the characters. But LWW was too short, too childish, and not detailed enough. I wanted there to be more, and I wanted him to go into more detail about what there was. It seemed to go by far too quick. It was like a half hour TV show, the aventure starts, it goes for 20 minutes, there's a ten minute ending, and then its over. Eh, maybe I just like Tolkien's style better.
Then again, I have yet to read any of the others (My parents read them all to me when I was a very little kid, but I don't remember most of them). I just started Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, having finished LWW so I think I'll finish that before I dive into the rest of the series.
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quote: You can really tell he hadn't come into his style with that one.
Well, that makes no sense. Despite the new "recommended" reading order being suggested by boneheads, The Magician's Nephew was written some time after most of the books.
That said, there are still parts of that book -- like Jadis and the Wood Between The Worlds -- that have stayed with me.
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I like Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I remember when I first read them. My teacher noticed I was reading them, and she had my class watch the old animated movie for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I didn't realize till later how religious the books are. He really compared the books to quite a few important things from the Christian religion.
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Add me to the list of people who thought The Last Battle was very weird. I haven't re-read them in quite some time, though, so I don't remember much about the other books.
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C.S. Lewis was a devout Christian, and infused much of his fiction with overt symbolism.
So yes, people who dislike that content might not like the series.
Still, I believe it's fully possible to read an enjoy a work by an author without agreeing with the author's world view.
I enjoy Carl Sagan's books, even though he took a dim (at best) view of religious belief...and had some very odd ideas about Mormons. But I loved Cosmos, Comets, and Contact.
I liked the Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman...such a wonderful, imaginative book. And that series quickly became VERY hostile towards Christianity...especially the organized kind. Still, good reading.
I don't agree with some of Lewis' conclusions about Christianity, but I've enjoyed the Chronicles, Till We Have Faces, and The Screwtape Letters.
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I have a very hard time understanding why people like LWW the most out of the seven, as I'm also in the camp of people who feel that it was the poorest of the lot. I really enjoyed VDT and LB, though. Those are probably my favourite of them.
Also, MN was the second last published...although it was finished last, in winter of 1954 (while LB was finished in spring of 1953). The most recent one finished before that was SC in 1951. When they came out, though, HHB was in autumn of 1954, MN spring of 1955, and LB autumn of 1956.
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