This time last year I had a sense of the kind of season that 2016 would be, but I did not know the how deeply the experiences of bereavement, family responsibility, and overwork would impact me. While my work has been lean in quality, and our little family castle is in serious need of attention, I have had a relatively good reading year. As a PhD student it is my “job” to read. More than this, though, through the difficulties and disappointments of 2015-16, reading has been a solace to me. Books are for me mental playgrounds, intellectual exercises, escapes not from something but into everything all at once.
Despite a lot of challenges, I exceeded some of my reading goals this year. I averaged 10 books a month–making this the biggest year ever for me. It was also the least variable year for me in book reading. Comparing the years 2014-16, we see a shift to more regularity. In the previous two years, my book reading sank as I got to the end of the winter semester and to the middle of the fall semester. What is consistent in all three years is the strength of my summer reading. The undergraduate teaching that dominates my fall and winter does not allow for a lot of reading, while the graduate teaching I have been doing each summer requires (permits!) a high reading level.
Though I don’t tend to count blogs or most internet articles, books are not all of my reading. In 2016 I also increased my reading of articles I read thoroughly and the number of lectures I listened to. While the three-year stats on article reading are more variable, it is evident that this kind of reading is front-loaded. I expect this trend to be similar in 2017-18 as I have four literature reviews to complete.
While all the numbers are up, the trend is a bit deceptive. In 2016 I meant to slow down a tiny bit and read longer, more academic books. My average length (319 pages/book) is almost the same as last year (312 pages/book), meaning that this was not the year I intended.
There is a reason for this. Because of the kind of year it was, I missed a lot of my academic goals. I read widely, but I can see that I turned to reading as a kind of tonic. From the point that my father-in-law landed in hospital in January 2015, through my mother’s diagnosis and rapid descent last winter, until October of this year, I got very little academic writing done. For the first time I have missed real deadlines and let people down. It wasn’t until late-October that I felt the fog lift. I was clear for the first time in months. I still have days where the work comes with agonizing slowness–I am not anywhere near my old pace–but I can see where things are going for me.
Even more than this, a kind of neat academic miracle occurred in the midst of the fog. While I wrote very little of my dissertation in that period–and was on leave for half of it–the narrative of my PhD thesis emerged very clearly in my mind. I can now see very precisely how all of the pieces fit together, and what the next two years look like for me. I just need time to write it all down.
2017, then, is less about reading and more about writing. In 2017 I will need to slow down and spend more time in each book. I can no longer afford to use reading as a tonic; it now has to be sustenance in all kinds of ways. In 2017 I will need to slow down and spend more time in each book. I will read fewer books, but probably take in more articles and lectures.
If you check out the reading list below (or the 2016 Goodreads Infographic with a more detailed summary), you will see my reading year was organized around 6 main focal points:
- The completion of my Reading C.S. Lewis Chronologically project on March 8th.
- A summer class at SignumU on “Mythologies of Love & Sex,” which was partly a C.S. Lewis course. Even though I had read everything before I assigned the syllabus, I wanted to reread these books as students were reading so my lectures were fresh–and so I could determine if the reading list was too heavy (it was!). I also read some things twice, which shows some discrepancy between the Goodreads list and my own.
- Research visits in the summer to the Wade Center (US) and the Bodleian (UK). archives, with conferences at Taylor University (in June) and the University of Glasgow (in September). This was why at the beginning of June I reread the Ransom Cycle and had a number of items that were part of a literature review, and in August my reading has the scent of interesting things found in a library. It is also why I have read C.S. Lewis’ The Quest of Bleheris and An Experiment in Criticism several times.
- A class at SignumU in the fall on “Folkloric Transformations,” with lectures by folklorist Dr. Dimitra Fimi and a reading list that focused mostly on vampyre literature and some fairy tale retellings.
- Each month I tried to read a theological book as a kind of devotional time. This included more classic works such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Bonhoeffer’s Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship, George MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons, Watchman Nee’s Normal Christian Life, and Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. I also read more modern treatments such as Alister McGrath’s work on Luther’s Theology of the Cross, Flannery O’Conner’s Prayer Journal, Ann Jervis’ At the Heart of the Gospel, Phyllis Tickle’s The Age of the Spirit, René Girard’s Sacrifice, Stanley Hauwerwas’ Cross-Shattered Christ, and Anna Fisk’s important book, Sex, Sin, and Our Selves.
- Reading projects through the Harry Potter world (I am now reading the supplementary books), Terry Pratchett’s Discworld (six books this year, and am now reading #21, Jingo), and what I call the “Extended Inklings”–books by and about the Oxford Inklings, and some of their friends and influences (like G.K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, and Dorothy Sayers).
The Goodreads app is kind of limited. They have a thousand possibilities for creating infographics, and though I am grateful for the one they have given us, I like to track different things. For example, my book reading trends show that 74.4% of my authors are men. Although 1/4 of books from women might be a high count considering the kind of authors I am focussed on, and the kind of work I do, I would like it to be higher. If I take out the books by C.S. Lewis–my primary author–the number of women authors increases to almost 1/3. In 2017 I expect that to be about the same ratio, but I will see a shift in the 2017-18 school year.
I also have begun tracking books by genre. True, my metric here is odd, but it works for me. I use these categories; Theology; SF/Fantasy lit; books by or about C.S. Lewis; books by or about the Extended Inklings; Classic Literature (mostly fiction); Modern Literature (fiction); and other Nonfiction (a catch-all; next year I’ll separate out feminist studies). The largest single category is Fantasy and SciFi literature, and if we included the Inklings and C.S. Lewis, speculative fiction might make up half of my reading (I only count books in one category). Books by and about C.S. Lewis make up about 1/5th of my reading, down a little this year as I completed my chronological reading. I am pleased that the Classic lit and Theology categories are each about 1/6th of my reading as I try to fill in the blank spaces in my education and put my PhD research in context.
What of 2017? I would like to set my sights high, but recognize that to be successful in my PhD program I need to narrow and deepen my reading. In 2017 I aim to hold steady as a whole, but decrease my book reading to 100 books, increase lectures series and classes to 10, and increase to 125 articles (235 pieces overall).
Here is my list of books in my 2016 reading. “CSL” below means “C.S. Lewis.” I’ve linked some of the blogs that connect with the things I’ve read. Are any of these books yours? If so, feel free to link my list. If you have your own year-end list or best-of blog, make sure you list it!
| # | Date | Book, Article, or Lecture Series |
| January | ||
| 1 | Jan 01 | Sørina Higgins, “Introduction” to King Arthur and the Inklings (2016) |
| 2 | Jan 05 | Warren Berger, A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (2014) |
| 3 | Jan 08 | CSL, “De Audiendis Poetis” (1958?) |
| 4 | Jan 09 | John Christopher, The Death of Grass (1956) |
| 5 | Jan 03 | Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal (1945-47; 2015) |
| 6 | Jan 11 | CSL, “On Juvenile Tastes” (1958) |
| 7 | Jan 12 | Norman Pittenger, “Apologist versus Apologist: A Critique of C.S. Lewis as ‘Defender of the Faith’” (1958) |
| 8 | Jan 12 | E.L. Allen, “The Theology of C.S. Lewis” (1945) |
| 9 | Jan 13 | CSL, “Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger” (1958) |
| 10 | Jan 13 | George C. Anderson, “C.S. Lewis: Foe of Humanism” (1945) |
| 11 | Jan 13 | Lyle W. Dorsett, “Unscrambling the C. S. Lewis ‘Hoax'” (1989) |
| 12 | Jan 13 | Pittenger, Lewis, Letters to the Editor, Christian Century (1958) |
| 13 | Jan 14 | CSL, “On the Efficacy of Prayer” (1959) |
| 14 | Jan 18 | Ron Srigley, “Dear Parents: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University But Don’t” (2015) |
| 15 | Jan 18 | Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms (1993) |
| 16 | Jan 19 | Derek Tidball et al, The Atonment Debate: Papers from the London Symposium on the Atonement (2005) |
| 17 | Jan 20 | Brian Grazer, ch. 1 of A Curious Mind (2015) |
| 18 | Jan 23 | CSL, The Discarded Image (1964, 1930s-50s Lectures) |
| 19 | Jan 24 | Terry Pratchett, Theatre of Cruelty (1993) |
| 20 | Jan 28 | CSL, “Modern Theology & Biblical Criticism” (= “Fern-seed and Elephants”) (1959) |
| 21 | Jan 29 | Carol & Philop Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary LIves of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (2015) |
| 22 | Jan 31 | CSL, The Four Loves (1959) |
| February | ||
| 23 | Feb 01 | Alister McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross (1985) |
| 24 | Feb 02 | CSL, “The English prose Morte” (1959; 1963) |
| 25 | Feb 02 | CSL, “Lucretius” (unknown date) |
| 26 | Feb 03 | Simon Armitage, Translation of the Alliterative Death of King Arthur/Morte Arthure (1400; 2012) |
| 27 | Feb 08 | Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1852-53) |
| 28 | Feb 08 | Christopher Hitchens, “Edward Said in Light and Shade (and Saul),” in Hitch 22 (2010) |
| 29 | Feb 09 | CSL, “After 10 Years” (1959-60) |
| 30 | Feb 13 | William Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes, Volume 2 (1803) |
| 31 | Feb 16 | CSL, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (1959) |
| 32 | Feb 16 | CSL, “Good Work and Good Works” (1959) |
| 33 | Feb 16 | CSL, “The Language of Religion” (1960) |
| 34 | Feb 16 | CSL, Preface to Austen Farrer, A Faith of Our Own (1960) |
| 35 | Feb 16 | CSL, “Christianity and Culture” (1939) |
| 36 | Feb 16 | CSL, Review of M. Pauline Parker, The Allegory of the Faerie Queene (1960) |
| 37 | Feb 16 | CSL, Review of R.S. Loomis, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (1960) |
| 38 | Feb 16 | CSL, “Metre” (1960) |
| 39 | Feb 16 | Walter Hooper, Preface to Selectred Literary Essays (1968) |
| 40 | Feb 16 | CSL, Review of John Vyvyan, Shakespeare and the Rose of Love (1960) |
| 41 | Feb 16 | CSL, “It All Began With a Picture….” (1960) |
| 42 | Feb 17 | Michael J. Gorman, The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement (2014) |
| 43 | Feb 17 | CSL, A Grief Observed (1960) |
| 44 | Feb 17 | CSL, “Haggard Rides Again” = “The Mythopoiec Gift of Rider Haggard” (1960) |
| 45 | Feb 18 | CSL, “Neoplatonism in te Poetry of Spenser” (1961) |
| 46 | Feb 18 | CSL, “Boswell’s Bugbear: Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Jonhson, ed. Bertram Hylton Davis” (1961) |
| 47 | Feb 18 | Harvie M. Conn, “Literature and Criticism” (1960) |
| 48 | Feb 22 | CSL, “Four-Letter Words” (1961) |
| 49 | Feb 23 | CSL, “Before We Can Communicate” (1961) |
| 50 | Feb 23 | CSL, An Experiment in Criticism (1961) |
| 51 | Feb 23 | CSL, “Tragic ends: George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy” (1962) |
| 52 | Feb 24 | “Eros on the loose: David Loth, The Erotic in Literature” (1962) |
| 53 | Feb 24 | CSL, “Oddyseus Sails Again: The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald” (1962) |
| 54 | Feb 24 | CSL, “Ajaz and others: John Jones, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy” (1962) |
| 51 | Feb 24 | CSL, “Sex in Literature” (1962) |
| 52 | Feb 25 | CSL, “The Vision of John Bunyan” (1962) |
| 53 | Feb 25 | CSL, “The Anthropological Approach” (1962) |
| 54 | Feb 25 | CSL, “Unreal Estates” (1962) |
| 55 | Feb 26 | George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons (1867) |
| 56 | Feb 28 | Terry Pratchett, Soul Music (1994) |
| March | ||
| 57 | Mar 01 | Walter Hooper, Preface to CSL, Of Other Worlds (1965) |
| 58 | Mar 01 | Walter Hooper, Preface to CSL, Of This and Other Worlds (1982) |
| 59 | Mar 02 | CSL, “The Seeing Eye” = “Onward, Christian Spacemen” (1963) |
| 60 | Mar 02 | CSL, “Must Our Image of God Go?” (1963) |
| 61 | Mar 02 | Walter Hooper, Preface to CSL, Christian Reflections (1966) |
| 62 | Mar 04 | CSL, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1963) |
| 63 | Mar 07 | CSL, Introduction to Selections from Layamon’s Brut, ed. G.L. Brook (1963) |
| 64 | Mar 07 | CSL, “Spenser’s Cruel Cupid” (1963) |
| 65 | Mar 07 | Walter Hooper, Preface to Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1965) |
| 66 | Mar 07 | CSL, “Poetry and exegesis: Harold Bloom, The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Poetry (1963) |
| 67 | Mar 07 | CSL, “Rhyme and reason: Dorothy L. Sayers, The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement” (1963) |
| 68 | Mar 08 | CSL, “Cross-Examination” = “I Was Decided Upon” (1963) |
| 69 | Mar 08 | CSL, “We Have No ‘Right to Happiness'” (1963) |
| 70 | Mar 08 | Walter Hooper, Preface to God in the Dock (1970) |
| 71 | Mar 08 | CSL, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume lll: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963, ed. Walter Hooper (2008) |
| 72 | Mar 08 | Sørina Higgins, “The Development of Sehnsucht in the Letters of C.S. Lewis” (2016) |
| 73 | Mar 08 | Paul Tankard, “C.S. Lewis’ Brush with Television” (2011) |
| 74 | Mar 08 | CSL interview with Wayland Young (1962) |
| 75 | Mar 10 | Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994) |
| 76 | Mar 12 | Jonathan Lunde, Following Jesus, the Servant King: A Biblical Theology of Covenantal Discipleship (2010) |
| 77 | Mar 16 | The Dalai Lama, Prologue & Chs. 1-2 of The Universe in a Single Atom (2005) |
| 78 | Mar 16 | Douglas Gresham, Lenten Lands (1988) |
| 79 | Mar 17 | Ron Dart, “T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis: Discord and Concord” (2008) |
| 80 | Mar 21 | George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind (1851) |
| 81 | Mar 30 | Patience Fetherston, “CSL on Rationalism (Unpublished Notes)” (1988) |
| 82 | Mar 31 | Thomas Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe (2006) |
| 83 | Mar 31 | Charlie Starr, “Perelandra: Faith vs. Sight” and part of ch. 3-4 of The Triple Enigma (2002) |
| 84 | Mar 31 | William Morris, The Well at the World’s End: Volume 1 (1896) |
| April | ||
| 85 | Apr 07 | Monika B. Hilder, The Feminine Ethos in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (2012) |
| 86 | Apr 07 | Chrétien de Troyes, Erec & Enide (c. 1170) |
| 87 | Apr 13 | Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (c. 1177-81) |
| 88 | Apr 17 | Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion (c. 1177-81) |
| 89 | Apr 19 | Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times (1998) |
| 90 | Apr 19 | Plato, “Euthyphru” (Late 5th c. BCE) |
| 91 | Apr 24 | David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996) |
| 92 | Apr 27 | Plato, The Symposium (Late 5th c. BCE) |
| May | ||
| 93 | May 02 | Armand Nicholi, The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life (2002) |
| 94 | May 03 | J.R.R. Tolkien,”On Fairy-Stories” (1947) |
| 95 | May 05 | CSL, The Four Loves broadcast (1958) |
| 96 | May 09 | William Morris, The Well at the World’s End: Volume 2 (1896) |
| 97 | May 12 | Myron C. Kauk, Song of Solomon: A Defense of the Three Character Interpretation (2010) |
| 98 | May 13 | Richard S. Hess, “Introduction” of Song of Songs (2005) |
| 99 | May 14 | Ariel & Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: The World’s First Great Love Poem (1995) |
| 100 | May 17 | Plato, The Symposium (Late 5th c. BCE) |
| 101 | May 18 | CSL, The Allegory of Love (1936) |
| 102 | May 20 | Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597) |
| 103 | May 23 | CSL, “Courtly Love” in The Allegory of Love (1936) |
| 104 | May 24 | William Levitan, ed., Abelard & Heloise (12th c.; 2007) |
| 105 | May 25 | Terry Pratchett, Maskerade (1995) |
| 106 | May 29 | Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597) |
| 107 | May 30 | CSL, Out of the Silent Planet (1937) |
| 108 | May 30 | Dante, Divine Comedy (1308-20) |
| 109 | May 30 | CSL, The Dark Tower (1940s) |
| 110 | May 31 | Roger White, “C.S. Lewis’ Poem ‘Nearly They Stood’: A Variorum & Research Notes,” (Apr 2009) |
| 111 | May 31 | Diane Simpson, “C.S. Lewis’s handwriting analysed,” (2008) |
| 112 | May 31 | Alison Flood, “Unseen C.S. Lewis letter defines his notion of joy,” (2014) |
| 113 | May 31 | Matthew Lee Anderson, “When the Story Stops Telling Itself: A New Letter from C.S. Lewis” (2013) |
| 114 | May 31 | Ryder W. Miller, From Narnia to A Space Odyssey: The War of Ideas Between Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Lewis (2003). |
| 115 | May 31 | Jennifer Swift, “ ‘A More Fundamental Reality than Sex’: C.S. Lewis and the Hierarchy of Gender” (2008) |
| June | ||
| 116 | Jun 01 | Joe R. Christopher and Joan K. Ostling, C. S. Lewis: An Annotated Checklist of Writings (1974) |
| 117 | Jun 01 | CSL, The Screwtape Letters (1941) |
| 118 | Jun 01 | Susan Lowenberg, C.S. Lewis: A Reference Guide: 1972-1988 (1993) |
| 119 | Jun 01 | John Wormsley, An Annotated Bibliography of the Criticism of C.S. Lewis’ Fiction from 1981-1991 (1992) |
| 120 | Jun 06 | Douglas Lee Semark, C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy: Metaphysical Theology in Science Fiction/Fantasy (1979) |
| 121 | Jun 07 | Jacobo E. Hoff, The Idea of God and the Spirituality of C.S. Lewis (1969) |
| 122 | Jun 08 | W.H. Lewis, The Lewis Papers (1916; 1928-30) |
| 123 | Jun 08 | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) |
| 124 | Jun 09 | Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice (1812) |
| 125 | Jun 11 | CSL, Perelandra (1943) |
| 126 | Jun 12 | CSL, An Experiment in Criticism (1961) |
| 127 | Jun 14 | Charles Huttar, “The Screwtape Letters as Epistolary Fiction” (2016) |
| 128 | Jun 19 | Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev (1972) |
| 129 | Jun 21 | CSL, That Hideous Strength (1945) |
| 130 | Jun 21 | CSL, “Bulverism” (1941) |
| 131 | Jun 23 | CSL, “The Grand Miracle” (1945) |
| 132 | Jun 25 | CSL, Till We Have Faces (1954) |
| 133 | Jun 28 | Ann Jervis, At the Heart of the Gospel: Suffering in the Earliest Christian Message (2007) |
| 134 | Jun 30 | Ian C. Storey, “The Classical Sub-text to Till We Have Faces (2007) |
| July | ||
| 135 | Jul 03 | Stephen King, The Body (1982) |
| 136 | Jul 04 | Ann M. Martin, A Corner of the Universe (2002) |
| 137 | Jul 05 | Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia (1977) |
| 138 | Jul 09 | John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (2005) |
| 139 | Jul 10 | G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown (1910) |
| 140 | Jul 12 | Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886) |
| 141 | Jul 13 | Roald Dahl, The BFG (1982) |
| 142 | Jul 14 | Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (1988) |
| 143 | Jul 15 | Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (1939) |
| 144 | Jul 16 | Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel (2010) |
| 145 | Jul 19 | Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay (1996) |
| 146 | Jul 19 | Monika B. Hilder, The Gender Dance: Ironic Subversion in C. S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy(2013) |
| 147 | Jul 21 | Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1811) |
| 148 | Jul 25 | Chris R. Armstrong, Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians (2016) |
| 149 | Jul 28 | Annie Dillard, An American Childhood (1987) |
| 150 | Jul 30 | CSL, The Quest of Bleheris (1916) |
| August | ||
| 151 | Aug 02 | Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (1986) |
| 152 | Aug 05 | Michael Lewis, The Monk: A Romance (1795) |
| 153 | Aug 18 | Diana Pavlac Glyer, Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings (2016) |
| 154 | Aug 21 | Terry Pratchett, Hogfather (1996) |
| 155 | Aug 25 | Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) |
| 156 | Aug 26 | CSL, The Quest of Bleheris (1916) |
| 157 | Aug 26 | William Empson, “Professor Lewis on Linguistics” (1960) |
| 158 | Aug 26 | Lyle W. Dorsett, “Researching C.S. Lewis” (1990) |
| 159 | Aug 26 | Stephen Logan, “Literary Theorist” (2010) |
| 160 | Aug 26 | John F. Fleming, “Literary Critic” (2010) |
| 161 | Aug 27 | Terence P. Logan, Review of An Experiment in Criticism (1966) |
| 162 | Aug 27 | George Watson, “Introduction” to Critical Essays on C.S. Lewis (1992) |
| 163 | Aug 27 | William Empson, “Milton’s God” (1961) |
| 164 | Aug 27 | CSL, An Experiment in Criticism (1961) |
| 165 | Aug 28 | Andrew Atherstone, Travel Through Oxford: City of Saints, Scholars and Dreaming Spires (2008) |
| 166 | Aug 28 | Hsiu-Chin Chou, theory sections of The problem of faith and the self: the interplay between literary art, apologetics and hermeneutics in C.S. Lewis’s religious narratives (2008) |
| 167 | Aug 28 | Various readings in CSL papers |
| 168 | Aug 28 | J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla (1872) |
| 169 | Aug 30 | Peter Ackroyd, Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors (2012) |
| 170 | Aug 30 | Anna Fisk, Sex, Sin, and Our Selves: Encounters in Feminist Theology and Contemporary Women’s Literature (2014) |
| 171 | Aug 30 | Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford (2011) |
| 172 | Aug 31 | Natalie K. Watson, selections of Feminist Theology (2003). |
| September | ||
| 173 | Sep 01 | Estelle Freedman, The Modern Scholar: Feminism and the Future of Women (2004) |
| 174 | Sep 01 | Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth (1909, 1962) |
| 175 | Sep 03 | CSL, The Quest of Bleheris (1916) |
| 176 | Sep 03 | Dawn Llewellyn, “Talking in Waves: A Generational and Secular Metaphor” (2015) |
| 177 | Sep 04 | William Oxtoby et al., “About Religion” (2014) |
| 178 | Sep 05 | Charlie Starr, parts of Light (2012) |
| 179 | Sep 05 | J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) |
| 180 | Sep 06 | CSL, A Grief Observed (1960) |
| 181 | Sep 06 | Marcella Maria Althaus-Reid & Lisa Isherwood, “Christology” in Controversies in Feminist Theology (2007) |
| 182 | Sep 08 | Stanley Hauerwas, The Cross-Shattered Christ (2005) |
| 183 | Sep 10 | Mark Godin, “Sexing the Author: Can a Man Write Feminist Theology?” (2009) |
| 184 | Sep 12 | Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel” (1797-1800; 1816) |
| 185 | Sep 13 | John Polidori, “The Vampyre” (1819) |
| 186 | Sep 13 | Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsong (1976) |
| 187 | Sep 13 | Oxtoby et all, “The Ancient World” (2014) |
| 188 | Sep 14 | A.J.A. Waldock, “The Poet and the Theme” in Paradise Lost and Its Critics (1947) |
| 189 | Sep 14 | CSL, An Experiment in Criticism (1961) |
| 190 | Sep 15 | Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) |
| 191 | Sep 15 | J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1999) |
| 192 | Sep 15 | George MacDonald, The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories (1864) |
| 193 | Sep 22 | Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (1976) |
| 194 | Sep 29 | Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories (1954) |
| October | ||
| 195 | Oct 01 | Charlaine Harris, Dead Until Dark (2001) |
| 196 | Oct 01 | Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (early 15th c.) |
| 197 | Oct 01 | George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons Series III (1867) |
| 198 | Oct 10 | J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) |
| 199 | Oct 10 | Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things (2015) |
| 200 | Oct 10 | CSL, “The Grand Miracle” (1945) |
| 201 | Oct 15 | Andrew Lazo, “Correcting the Chronology: Some Implications of ‘Early Prose Joy’” (2012) |
| 202 | Oct 15 | Andrew Lazo, “‘Early Prose Joy’: A Brief Introduction (2013) |
| 203 | Oct 17 | CSL, Early Prose Joy (1931) |
| 204 | Oct 21 | J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) |
| 205 | Oct 22 | J.R.R. Tolkien,”On Fairy-Stories” (1947) |
| 206 | Oct 26 | Jason Lepojärvi, “What Exactly is “Charity”? A Reinterpretation of C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves” (2016) |
| 207 | Oct 29 | Joseph Pearce, C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church (2004) |
| 208 | Oct 29 | Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and the Beast (2000) |
| 209 | Oct 30 | Phyllis A. Tickle & Jon M. Sweeney, The Age of the Spirit: How the Ghost of an Ancient Controversy Is Shaping the Church (2014) |
| 210 | Oct 31 | Roald Dahl, Revolting Rhymes (1982) |
| 211 | Oct 31 | Catherine Storr, Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf (1974) |
| November | ||
| 212 | Nov 03 | Various, Great Vampire Stories: 30 Classic Victorian Tales of Vampires (19th c.) |
| 213 | Nov 04 | The Bible (English Standard Version, 2001) |
| 214 | Nov 07 | CSL, Out of the Silent Planet (1937) |
| 215 | Nov 12 | Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847) |
| 216 | Nov 12 | Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) |
| 217 | Nov 13 | René Girard, Sacrifice (2011) |
| 218 | Nov 17 | Dimitra Fimi, Folkloric Transformations (2016) |
| 219 | Nov 18 | CSL, Perelandra (1943) |
| 220 | Nov 23 | Matthew Vines, God and the Gay Christian (2014) |
| 221 | Nov 23 | Courtney Petrucci, “Abolishing Man: Breaking and Recovering the Chain of Being in C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Cycle” (2016) |
| 222 | Nov 24 | Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011) |
| 223 | Nov 26 | CSL, That Hideous Strength (1945) |
| 224 | Nov 27 | Jessica Shaver Renshaw, New Every Morning (2006) |
| 225 | Nov 30 | Lyle Dorsett, Spiritual Formation in C.S. Lewis’ Life (2003) |
| December | ||
| 226 | Dec 01 | Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937) |
| 227 | Dec 02 | J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003) |
| 228 | Dec 08 | John Garth, “When JRR Tolkien bet CS Lewis: the wager that gave birth to The Lord of the Rings” (2016) |
| 229 | Dec 10 | Pseudo-Dionysius, “Mystical Theology” (5th-6th c.) |
| 230 | Dec 10 | J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) |
| 231 | Dec 10 | Ross Douthat, “Settling into a Decadent Decline” (2014) |
| 232 | Dec 16 | George Musacchio, “C.S. Lewis’s Unpublished Letter in Old English” (1926; 2015) |
| 233 | Dec 16 | Walter Hooper, “Introduction” and “Preface” to Image and Imagination (2013) |
| 234 | Dec 16 | J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007) |
| 235 | Dec 18 | Watchman Nee, Normal Christian Life (1957) |
| 236 | Dec 19 | Crystal Hurd, “The Pudaita Pie: Reflections on Albert Lewis” (2015) |
| 237 | Dec 19 | C.S Lewis & W.H. Lewis, “Pudaita Pie: An Anthology” (1920s) |
| 238 | Dec 20 | David Lake, “Variant Texts of That Hideous Strength” (1989) |
| 239 | Dec 21 | Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data (2012) |
| 240 | Dec 21 | Alister McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life (2015) |
| 241 | Dec 21 | Michael Ward, “The Theological Imagination of C.S. Lewis” (2010) |
| 242 | Dec 22 | CSL, “Myth Became Fact” (1944) |
| 243 | Dec 22 | Alister McGrath, “The Most Reluctant Convert” in C.S. Lewis: A Life (2013) |
| 244 | Dec 24 | Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) |
| 245 | Dec 25 | Ransom Riggs, Hollow City (2015) |
| 246 | Dec 26 | Os Guiness, “The Evangelical Moment” |
| 247 | Dec 29 | John Bowen, The Spirituality of Narnia: The Deeper Magic of C.S. Lewis (2007) |
Where can I find “The Theology of C.S. Lewis” by E.L. Allen? I googled it but wasn’t having much luck. Also, I love all your charts and graphs! I may have to try to make some of my own for my nerdier reading post!
Hi Jen, this is from the stacks! Can you send me an email, junkola [at] gmail? It’s quite short, and is key reading behind the Pittenger debate.
Here is my nerd version of my book breakdown for the year, with a hat-tip to you!
http://www.jenniferneyhart.com/2016/12/2016-book-breakdown.html
Awesome!
I see that you read my and Ostling’s secondary bibliography. Impressive!
I also noted your reading of Chretien de Troyes. This past fall (I won’t go into the reasons) I read all twelve of Marie de France’s Breton lais for the first time. All of them in Dorothy Gilbert’s translation. (I had read two of them earlier by other translators.) Far shorter than what you were reading, but intriguing in some of the same ways. One Arthurian story among them, and also a single poem about Tristram and Yseut (called only “the Queen” in the lai). Curious enough Guinevere is also called just “the queen” in Marie’s Arthurian poem. (Marie does not connect Tristram to the Arthurian world.) Perhaps I should add that Gilbert uses Guinevere’s name in her translation, but the name is not in the original. Of course, in Chretien’s poem about Lancelot and Guinevere–“The Knight of the Cart” (or just “Lancelot”)–the poet does not use Guinevere’s name, except once in the 7134 lines (in the 1043-1206 section) and in Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” with its Arthurian setting, again one has just references to “the queen.” (I hope I’m right about this–I read Chretien’s poem in W. W. Comfort’s translation.) Chaucer, I feel intuitively, was following the models of Chretien and Marie, but I wonder at these two earlier examples. Since Marie sometimes gave the names of her other heroines, it was not a sexist avoidance. Was it a matter of avoiding the naming of a woman of high rank?
First, on your annotated bibliography, this comes up as an “article” on my spreadsheet as I only went through 60 pages or so. It was a helpful piece of work.
I have not read Marie, and read Chretien (also by Comfort) in preparing for a class where I was going through bits of CS Lewis’ Allegory of Love–and partly to catch the breadth of Chretien’s career in order to fill the shift that happened in that end of the century.
I had not caught the naming thing. I think when I was reading, Malory was echoing in my ear and so Guinevere was always, ever present. It is a poor way to read, but true of how we often do read. I’ve never thought of who the Queen in the Wife of Bath was. I have never heard of the avoidance of a name due to rank, but we do get a lot of titles in this period: madame (my lady), midon (my lord or lady), syr, etc.
Handing you the high five of respect, Brenton. Although reading is one of the things I love to do most, I seem to struggle these days to find time to do as much as I want, and my life is not nearly as busy as yours. So thanks for the inspiration, and here’s to more words read in 2017!
Wow this is amazing Brenton! You are so dedicated, and it is inspiring to see you how committed you are to your reading journey! So happy for you!
Thanks!
Amazing! And yes, inspiring!
Thanks!
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I love it! My wife calls it ‘my craziness’, but in 2016, my first year of full retirement (sort of), I read 153.5 books, 52,848 pages. This does not include some of my devotional readings. I’m glad to know there are others that maintain book lists and stats. This year, my goal is to scale back to devote time to writing blogs (first posting two weeks ago). Thanks, now I can tell my wife that there are others out there.
This is really a fine piece of Work! Good Job!