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Jun. 15th, 2009 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterbobbinBook 42: That Hideous Strength, CS Lewis. 382pp
Um...
Okay, so first of all this book took me months to read. I started it, was so bored by the beginning that I put it aside for several months, and I really only picked it up again because I was literally without Anything Else to Do.
I will grant that it did start picking up the pace a little after I started re-reading. However, in the end I found it a very unsatisfactory piece of work, especially following the brilliance of "Perelandra".
Let's just say I didn't care for either of the main characters at all, and although they DID grow and change to some extent over the course of the book, I wasn't really much more impressed with them in the end than in the beginning.
There was also too much talking by too many people who were too scholarly for my level of intelligence; too much fuzzing of Christianity with mythology]; too many pages.
*sigh* At least I made it all the way through. But I really doubt I'll be coming back to it very often.
What I think could, possibly, have made it more palatable?
First of all, not having Ransom as the main character threw me for a loop, considering that he SHOULD be the main character, regardless of who else is necessary to drive the story along. Second, it needs to preserve more of the style of the two previous books: a lot of observation of what is going on, perhaps, seen in a new light through Ransom's eyes?
I'm not even 100% sure what could have helped, but it needed something.
Um...
Okay, so first of all this book took me months to read. I started it, was so bored by the beginning that I put it aside for several months, and I really only picked it up again because I was literally without Anything Else to Do.
I will grant that it did start picking up the pace a little after I started re-reading. However, in the end I found it a very unsatisfactory piece of work, especially following the brilliance of "Perelandra".
Let's just say I didn't care for either of the main characters at all, and although they DID grow and change to some extent over the course of the book, I wasn't really much more impressed with them in the end than in the beginning.
There was also too much talking by too many people who were too scholarly for my level of intelligence; too much fuzzing of Christianity with mythology]; too many pages.
*sigh* At least I made it all the way through. But I really doubt I'll be coming back to it very often.
What I think could, possibly, have made it more palatable?
First of all, not having Ransom as the main character threw me for a loop, considering that he SHOULD be the main character, regardless of who else is necessary to drive the story along. Second, it needs to preserve more of the style of the two previous books: a lot of observation of what is going on, perhaps, seen in a new light through Ransom's eyes?
I'm not even 100% sure what could have helped, but it needed something.
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Date: 2009-06-16 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 01:46 am (UTC)One thing that put me off about the Space Trilogy concerns the mention that Lewis makes about angels being unseen because they move faster and in a different plane from mortals (or something like that). Mind you, this is not in a theology book but a science-fiction book, and it didn't bother me when I read it any more than the idea of talking animals in the Narnicles bothers me; it's fiction.
Well, not too long after CH and I had read the ST, there was some evangelist who came to our church who preached as specially-revealed, prophetic, Word of Knowledge doctrine that the reason we mortals can't see angels most of the time is that -- you guessed it -- they move faster and on a different plane from mortals, so that's why they're invisible to the unaided human eye, don'tcha know and since I'm so very
Gnosticknowledgeable in spiritual mysteries, you should give me ALL your money THIS VERY DAY.So although we didn't quite throw out the baby with the bathwater, that experience just kind of tainted the enjoyment of the stories for me.
I'm GLAD y'all are enjoying the ST, but just watch out for What's His Name if you're ever in church in southeast Idaho.
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Date: 2009-06-16 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 02:34 am (UTC)