As promised, in this entry I’ll finish off the survey of books I’ve read this summer. I’ve had a few good ones sneak in toward the end, and I’m excited to tell you about them.
The very first book I read this summer was C.S. Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces. The book takes place in pre-Christian Europe and is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. A few months later, I picked up another book by Lewis, this time his classic The Great Divorce. As a Christian, I found the book to be a moving and insightful fictionalization of people’s reactions to grace. Though I enjoyed both, Till We Have Faces had a stronger impact on me and, of the two, has a more universal message.
Growing up, I had the complete Sherlock Holmes short stories, read them, loved them. Incidentally, from this memory, I decided the new movie didn’t look a thing like the books I loved, so I still haven’t seen it. I did, however, read a couple of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels this summer: first A Study in Scarlet then The Hound of the Baskervilles. Though it was fun learning where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson came from and how they met, I found the first book to be uneven. The second book, was fantastic. In it, Doyle tells the story of a crime eerie enough to be suspenseful, but not so much to be creepy. (I find the bizarre fascinating, but I can’t stand the viscerally creepy.)
Overall, I’d say that my favorites from the summer were Till We Have Faces, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Ender’s Game. Tomorrow, a new semester begins, and with it, I will sadly no longer have time to read three or four novels a month.
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