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9 - 16 Jan: Charles Williams, Curdie, and Puck of Pooks Hill


School books aside, mostly, it was a week for Inklings which is how I plan to spend the year.


Many Dimensions by Charles Williams

I had expectations going in to Charles Williams novels and so far he is compelling and florid. The funny part is this predates That Hideous Strength by fourteen years, but the main scientific mind and his mercenary henchman are pure Weston and Divine. It is almost like Lewis read this and said, “Islam wouldn’t be the responding party, the spheres would and Arthur.” Then he wrote that story.


I’m also getting a slight note of MacDonald’s Phantastes with the shadow just touching Chloe.



The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis by Jason Baxter


I picked up the book to check Lewis’s influences against my shelves after listening to the audiobook last year. I love footnotes; This has footnotes. I began rereading to see what else I missed.


This is the book where I found his letter on learning to read Latin, starting in Acts with stories you know well. The rest will be a pleasant ramble with many a goose trail. Baxter writes clear prose which I value in an academic. This means when he says something, he is done, so his books are also short.


Unruly Places by Alistair Bonnet


I love weird YouTube videos about strange places and events. I’m not a true crime person, but the Tunguska event and the place where mail dies delight me.


Now that I’m an ascetic from the early twentyoughts with only text capabilities, the solution is basically weird coffee table books or Father Capon.


This covers the gambit from paper towns and CIA black sights to fake cities and moving islands. It is glorious and full of implicatory statements.


“…if you go high enough, all claims to national sovereignty cease, since the traditional
"up to heaven and down to hell" approach would mean that, as the earth rotates, great cones of sovereignty would arc their way across the galaxies.” P. 143

If true, big.


The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald


Entering the realm of audiobooks we have the newest family favorite. My husband and I discovered MacDonald this last year. The original audio for this was uneven, so my husband re-recorded with  a local publishing house. Basically my two year old thinks daddy is dropping everything and reading her Curdie at nap time.


Some of my favorite lines are right in the first chapters, “ He who is diligent will soon be cheerful.” and “the road to the next duty is the only straight one.”


Puck of Pook’s Hill by Rudyard Kipling


For a short time last week I though George MacDonald was his grandfather which would explain why this book is so wonderful. As it is, this book just has to be wonderful because it is. Kipling’s grandfather was a George MacDonald, but not the George MacDonald.


Each chapter begins with poetry and the first began with Puck’s Song,  a versification of everything we have learned since last year in history. The chapter ended with Oak and Ash and Thorn, another tree list to add to my collection with Spencers, winding in naturally with MacDonald’s tree maidens in Phantastes.

What a treat.


The narrator is good as well which is an extra boon now that we have forty five minutes of coming and going anytime we go.


The story is charming on its own, but sits just right with the medievalists I can’t put down.


“Son Hugh, it needed no sign from a heathen God to show me that you will never be a monk. Take your sword, and keep your sword, and go with your sword, and be as gentle as you are strong and courteous. We will hang up the Smith’s tools before the Altar,” he said, “because, whatever the Smith of the Gods may have been in the old days, we know that he worked honestly for his living and made gifts to Mother Church.”

In Kipling even the old god’s can repent.


Further Up and Further In

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