Archives for C.S. Lewis

6. Oxford Spring—May Morning at Magdalen Tower (1 May, 2024)

6. Oxford Spring—May Morning at Magdalen Tower (1 May, 2024)

1 May, 2024 | No Comments

by Dana Rail  Previous posts in the “Oxford Spring” series: Introduction: An Oxford Spring “Mind How You Go” (April 17 – 19, 2024) From Purgatorio to Paradiso Vanishing Points A Canal Walk (April 29, 2024) Another checked box on o ur Oxford Bucket List! We rose at 4 a.m. this morning and could already hear the shouts and cries of rowdy students in the nearby streets, most of them probably up all night and already on their way to Magdalen Bridge. By 5 (it was already getting light this far north) we, too, were heading down the High towards Magdalen
Read More

Quick Take: Stephen King’s FAIRY TALE

Quick Take: Stephen King’s FAIRY TALE

22 November, 2022 | 2 Comments

I was a teenager when I first read Stephen King. The book was Salem’s Lot and the damn thing scared me so badly I didn’t pick up King again for two decades. Then came The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower series, pressed upon me by friends whose opinions I trusted. I fell in love. See, I’m not a straight-out horror fan. I can’t bear slasher stories and maniacal clowns, but I do enjoy fantasies that grapple with the (to me, obvious) darkness in the world. Any world. So it was inevitable, I suppose, that I should give King’s latest, Fairy
Read More

The Day I Fell in Love

The Day I Fell in Love

18 January, 2022 | No Comments

January 18 is Winnie-the-Pooh Day…Huzzah! I’m one of those folks who remembers little of early childhood. I have, however, one sun-bright memory of sitting rapt at my school desk in Mrs. G’s second grade class, aged seven, as she read aloud, over a period of several weeks, A.A. Milne’s House at Pooh Corner. That was the day I first fell in love. With books.  And now that I think of it, with fantasy literature as well. I loved Pooh so ardently, back in second grade, I begged for him for Christmas. Santa kindly came through with the hardcover edition of
Read More

Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi: Some Initial Reflections

Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi: Some Initial Reflections

17 January, 2022 | 1 Comment

“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.” ~ Piranesi, pg. 5 I warn the reader that, although I will try not to give overt spoilers—except to name a certain character, a name which we learn part way through the book—it is impossible not to discuss Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi without risking that the very ideas brought up might constitute spoilers in some way. So, perhaps these reflections are better saved for a post-reading discussion. (And I use the words “discuss” and “reflections” because I cannot possibly review a book by Clarke. One simply follows her along the mysterious
Read More