The Narnian

Don't you like reading a good book? Especially in winter, I suppose, when (for us in the north) the range of alternative activities is somewhat limited. Anyway, I have always been the bookish type. In my middle- and high school years I loved sitting on the back porch on a rainy day and reading Dickens. Strange boy!

And I guess that marks me as a bit of an anglophile. I have to admit it's true, I do suffer a touch of that malady. But lately I've been getting my thirst quenched by reading Alan Jacobs' biography of C. S. Lewis, The Narnian. It is a wonderful and perceptive book, and the stories of Lewis' school days, and the sound of Lewis' voice--the lucid English diction--more than satisfy my anglophilia.

It is not so much a biography of Lewis as the story of the development of his imaginative life. And Jacobs is a fine one to take us on the journey--sympathetic without fawning, critical without bombast. A rare combination of traits in a biographer. Anyway, it's good to get back to Lewis now and then. I highly recommend this book.