Spike's Bitches 38: Well, This Is Just...Neat.
[NAFDA] Spike-centric discussion. Lusty, lewd (only occasionally crude), risqué (and frisqué), bawdy (Oh, lawdy!), flirty ('cuz we're purty), raunchy talk inside. Caveat lector.
I hate that they've changed the series packaging so that TMN rather than TLTWATW is the first book. It's just not anything like as good an introduction to the series, IMHO.
Huh. Which number in the series was it for you when you were wee? 'Cause it was Book 1 in the editions I was reading as a kid, I'm pretty sure (ah, Narnia! My first ever fandom, back before I knew what fandom was).
Voyage of the Dawn Treader!
God, I remember my Mum walking into a room and finding me sobbing my
heart
out, just weeping and weeping, heartbroken, and she was all "OMG! What what what?" And
I
was all "....heroic mouse!....self-sacrifice!....Reepicheep!" And when she eventually grasped that her 7 year old was in this state over the fate of a fictional
mouse...
well, my Mum has never really grokked that side of my personality.
vw, I loved
The Golden Compass.
Loved loved loved. And I didn't find it antithetical to theism either, actually. The direction he takes the subsequent books is more agressively atheist, but at least initially I thought that he was going for agnosticism. YMMV. (As to not letting one's kids read them lest they be OMG corrupted by atheism - I confess, this makes me want to shake people until their teeth rattle. Not least because (a) I adored the Narnia books as a child and knew them inside out and back to front - and, look, Ma, still not Christian; and (b) after reading
His Dark Materials
I realised that, yes, I was more of an agnostic than an atheist. I found the final book spiritually barren, and had not been expecting it to be.)
On a slightly related note, I'm re-reading (well, Audiobooking)
Ender's Game
and its sequels at the moment, and I'm finding all the religious stuff absolutely fascinating.
GF has been un-laid off. That place is weird, but at least this is good weird. I guess her boss went to bat for her.
Which number in the series was it for you when you were wee?
Six. The version that was being published in America when I first read it circa 1980 was TLTWATW, Prince Caspian, Dawn Treader, Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician's Nephew, Last Battle. Which I think is publication order.
GOOD NEWS, GC! So happy for you both.
That sounds like the same order as the set I had, Susan. Circa 1990 or so. So far, I've read (in this order) TLTWATW, Prince Caspian, Dawn Treader, Magician's Nephew. I think that Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Last Battle seems like a reasonable order for the rest. Except that that only one I can find right now is Horse and His Boy.
Horse and His Boy was my favorite as a child because it had horsies and I identified with Aravis.
I really must read the rest of the Narnia series. I've only read TLTWATW.
Even as a child, I much prefered The Hobbit, though I liked both books quite a bit. I still maintain this is because of my Catholic upbringing (though it was a sort of Catholic lite, as I never went to Catholic school, and my mom was not very into it, and turned Methodist by the time I was about 10).
Even my atheism has a very ex-Catholic flavor to it. I'm quite sure my love of Kevin Smith's
Dogma
is due to its grounding in Catholicism. My preference for Lord of the Rings, as well.
But then, the teachings of Cathol can be quite moving.
I like Lewis better than Tolkien for reasons that have nothing to do with theology and everything to do with their writing. Tolkien's characters always feel apart from me, as if I'm observing them from a distance. With Lewis, I'm either in the characters' heads or right next to them.
When I don't love a book people who know my tastes expect me to enjoy, it's almost always because I feel distant from rather than intimate with the characters. I've never been able to put my finger on what about writing style, POV use, etc. makes the difference, though. E.g., Bernard Cornwell has stated that when he started writing Sharpe he was trying to produce something like the Hornblower series, which he loved--and I can see all those similarities. But still, as a reader, Hornblower leaves me cold because I feel too distant from the characters, while I'm a great big Sharpe fangirl because the character connection is just right.
ETA I'm heretic enough to prefer the LOTR movies to the books because Peter Jackson, the actors involved, etc. did for me what Tolkien's books didn't--enabled me to connect to the characters and care about their fates on a gut level.
Great news GC!! That should make the holiday time a bit merrier.
I was completely oblivious to the Christian thing when I read the books. I've wanted to read them again to get a better sense of them.
Sad to say, but P-C is me. I read the series fresh out of undergrad. I was doing summer stock, and the house host had a TON of books, and saw the whole lot of them and just flipped the pages until they were all read. I recall rolling eyes a few times thinking "o gawd, thats as bad as blind faith in church", but school had fried the brain, and summer stock wasn't helping either, so I didn't hear the clue phone ringing.
Huh. Which number in the series was it for you when you were wee? 'Cause it was Book 1 in the editions I was reading as a kid, I'm pretty sure (ah, Narnia! My first ever fandom, back before I knew what fandom was).
Fay is me. Susan, my series (also from the early 80s) started with TMN, too. To be honest, it always bugged me when people started with TLTWATW because of the whole chronological thing. But I'm weird that way.
Great news, GC!
