If I Had Lunch With C. S. Lewis

Review of If I Had Lunch With C. S. Lewis by Alister McGrath

Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: What if you could ask C. S. Lewis his thoughts on some of the most difficult questions of life? If you could, the result would be Dr. Alister McGrath’s provocative and perceptive book, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis. Best-selling author, prominent academic, and sought-after speaker, Dr. McGrath sees C. S. Lewis as the perfect conversation companion for the persistent meaning-of-life questions everyone asks.

What makes Lewis a good dialogue partner is that his mind traveled through a wide and varied terrain: from atheism of his early life to his conversion later in life; from his rational skepticism to his appreciation of value of human desires and imagination; from his role as a Christian apologist during World War II to his growth as a celebrated author of classic children’s literature. The questions Lewis pondered persist today: Does life have meaning? Does God exist? Can reason and imagination be reconciled? Why does God allow suffering?

My Review:

I must be changing the way I think since this is the second time in 30 day period that I have chosen to review nonfiction. This book centers on one of my favorite writers, C. S. Lewis.

The author presented the reader with a hypothetical situation. What would we talk about if we were to have lunch with C. S. Lewis? What would he say about the subjects that matter most to us?

McGrath reminds us that besides his famous series “The Chronicles of Narnia,” Lewis is known first and foremost for his work as a Christian apologist. What would he say about these subjects that he hasn’t already said in his books or better yet how can it be worded so that we could understand him better?

I don’t think that I am stupid. In fact, some would say the opposite. But I have often times struggled to understand exactly what he means in some of his books. I think Mr. McGrath cleared a lot of that confusion up for me. I understand much better than before and it makes more sense to me. This, for me, was the best part of the book. I gained a better understanding of Lewis’ main points as an apologist.

This is not to say that there wasn’t discussion of the Narnia series. I actually understood better how the events in Narnia helped illustrate Lewis’ main points about God even if they fit neatly into his theology—he did have a point.

Of course I have always liked how Lewis chose the name of the lands of Narnia based on an old map of a place dear to my heart—Narni, Italy. But I also like the stories themselves as well. In Narnia, there are giants of both size and strength like Aslan, as well as giants of courage in small packages like the mouse Reepicheep.

I couldn’t really see much of a down side to this book at all. I think it could helpful to people who might have read Lewis’ works and/or McGrath’s biography of Lewis and just didn’t get it all. If that is you, give it a try. After all, it is less than 200 pages.

Women Heroes of World War I

Review of Women Heroes of World War I by Katheryn J. Atwood

Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: In time for the 2014 centennial of the start of the Great War, this book brings to life the brave and often surprising exploits of 16 fascinating women from around the world who served their countries at a time when most of them didn’t even have the right to vote. Readers meet 17-year-old Frenchwoman Emilienne Moreau, who assisted the Allies as a guide and set up a first-aid post in her home to attend to the wounded; Russian peasant Maria Bochkareva, who joined the Imperial Russian Army by securing the personal permission of Tsar Nicholas II, was twice wounded in battle and decorated for bravery, and created and led the all-women combat unit the “Women’s Battalion of Death” on the eastern front; and American journalist Madeleine Zabriskie Doty, who risked her life to travel twice to Germany during the war in order to report back the truth, whatever the cost. These and other suspense-filled stories of brave girls and women are told through the use of engaging narrative, dialogue, direct quotes, and document and diary excerpts to lend authenticity and immediacy. Introductory material opens each section to provide solid historical context, and each profile includes informative sidebars and “Learn More” lists of relevant books and websites, making this a fabulous resource for students, teachers, parents, libraries, and homeschoolers.

My Review:

This week I am stepping away from fiction entirely and towards the world of nonfiction. Kathryn contacted me through Twitter offering me a copy of this book to review. I thought it might be fun for a change of pace.

Also I love History and I hope you do also. And this is a part of History that I knew nothing about. Could there really be that many heroic women involved in the First World War? Apparently so.

This was not a short book either. There were more names than I ever could have imagined. These heroes came from all walks of life: spies, nurses, soldiers and journalists. But the soldiers were by far the most surprising. I had no idea than any woman had ever served as a soldier during this war.

And the book was not written in an academic tone either. I think it was a young adult book yet the details seemed well-researched and pertinent.

These women had done some incredible things and were motivated by incredible ideas. Many of them did fight or work due to their own patriotism but just as many seemed to also fight for the love of a man, either a brother, father, husband, son, or even a lover.

At the same time there were the sad stories of some of the Russian women who fought. I think at least one of them was only fighting because the war had killed her whole family and she had nowhere else to go. It seemed sad but her contribution to the war effort was not.

The other thing that amazed me was the photos that the author managed to scrounge up along with the lists for further reading. And many of the women had written their own stories down which Atwood also lists. I am not sure if all of them were in English though so who knows if you could actually read them.

The best thing about the book was the way it gave you some background into why and how this war started. I knew about the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand but I never really understand how this ever translated into a large scale war like this one. That is until I read the author’s background into the war. Without it, I think it would be hard for readers to really appreciate who these women were and what they did.

I recommend this to all but especially to those who want to know more about this war and why any woman would want to get involved in it.

The Budapest House

Review of The Budapest House by Marcus Ferrar


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: A Hungarian Jew traumatised by the loss of half her family in Auschwitz returns to Budapest to retrace her roots. She discovers a dramatic personal history that enables her eventually to shed the burden of her past and move forward to a new life.
This is a true story of human beings caught up in the maelstrom of 20th century history – the Nazis, genocide, Cold War, dictatorship, and the struggle to make new lives after the fall of Communism.
Told with great sympathy and warmth, this well researched book brings history to life by recounting the experiences of ordinary men and women confronted with daunting challenges.

My Review:

The Budapest House is the story of Frances Pinter as well as the author, Marcus Ferrar. I think I picked this book up a few weeks ago and thought that it was going to be something else entirely.

It was nonfiction rather than fiction and it starts out a little slowly. The preface, I think, tries to explain the who mostly. It answers the question: Who is Frances Pinter? What is she like? I meanwhile kept wondering about the why and what. What is the Budapest House and why is it important? More importantly, why did I even pick up this book?

I confess I skipped over this part initially when I realized it wasn’t going to answer my question and went straight to chapter one. It seemed more interesting.

I discovered that The Budapest House is so much more than the story of a house; it is the physical embodiment of Frances’ quest to connect with her Hungarian and Jewish ancestry. We are told that she feels most at home in England though she spent much of her childhood years in the United States and Switzerland.

Somehow that lack of knowing leaves an ache in her to know more, to understand, what life was really like in Hungary for her family—both those who left the country and the ones who stayed behind. When she inherits the house of her grandparents made possible by her mother’s early death, she decides that now is the time to look, to ask, and to find out.

She finds out that she still has a cousin of two in the country and decides to ask them when she arrives in Budapest. She learns more that she bargains for while also being forced to deal with the house’s most notorious (and I think the only) resident, a man called Berkesi. He worked for the secret police during the years of Communism as well as writing Cold War spy novels that the Communists presumably approved of.

While Frances tries to complete the projects assigned to her by George Soros, she must now deal with his demands as she is forced to become his next door neighbor, a neighbor who is unwilling to move out.

She travels all over Eastern Europe for Soros but never forgets her beloved house. It may not be much to others but to her it is her history. She continues to return, year after year, hoping for the day when she will have that moment when something important dawns on her and she at last feels like she belongs.

There are parts of this book that intrigued me a lot but there were some that bored me. I don’t remember which chapter it was but it was somewhere in the middle. I had to force myself to pay attention. So I recommend this book only to those who don’t need constant action in their narratives. I learned more about Hungary in this book than I have known about it my whole life.

Unbroken

Review of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand


Overview from www.goodreads.com: On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.


The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

My Review:

Much like Louis (or Louie) Zamperini, the world around him was always on the move. As a young child of Italian immigrants, Louie was always in trouble. He liked to steal things and cause a general havoc wherever he went. He seemed destined for a mental hospital or worse but then his brother Pete had a great idea. Louie would become a runner. Pete trained him until he became one the best there were and for a while it seemed as though his troubles might be over but they were only just beginning.

Unbroken tells us the story of the first part, which I just summarized as well as what happened next. We have all heard the troubled kid makes good story before and usually when that kid turns himself around, the story ends.

But of course life goes on and so must Louie. He continues running at school, winning meet after meet. Then just when all seems lost he gets himself a spot on the 1936 Olympics, the same one where Jesse Owens won four gold medals.

After that one moment in the sun, war breaks out and Louie’s dreams are cut short when he goes off to the Pacific to fight. To say that he endured terrible things there would be a gross understatement. He survived a plane crash, being lost at sea on a raft for forty-seven days, and then the terrible horrors of a Japanese prison camp.

The same courage and stubbornness that got him in trouble with the law when he was young, that kept him going when he was floating out on a raft in the Pacific, gave him the courage to survive and defy the brutality of his Japanese soldiers. He just wouldn’t let go, give in or give up.

His incredible true story kept me on the edge of my seat. It also kept me wondering: How much more can this guy take?  When my father and I were discussing this book he told me that he too was thinking, “enough already.” What more can he go through?

This book has been made into a movie directed by Angelina Jolie though I have no idea when it will be released. I only hope that she does it justice. In the meantime, I recommend this book wholeheartedly. I guarantee it will make your problems seem small in comparison and encourage you to go forward. It did for me anyway.

Home Front Girl

Review of Home Front Girl by Joan Wehlen Morrison

Overview from www.bn.com: This diary of a smart, astute, and funny teenager provides a fascinating record of what an everyday American girl felt and thought during the Depression and the lead-up to World War II. Young Chicagoan Joan Wehlen describes her daily life growing up in the city and ruminates about the impending war, daily headlines, and major touchstones of the era—FDR’s radio addresses, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Goodbye Mr. Chips and Citizen Kane, Churchill and Hitler, war work and Red Cross meetings. Included are Joan’s charming doodles of her latest dress or haircut reflective of the era. Home Front Girl is not only an entertaining and delightful read but an important primary source—a vivid account of a real American girl’s lived experiences.

My Review:

This one is a hard one to review but I decided that I just had to do it since I think it is such an interesting book. It is basically tells the story of the life of a young girl from the 1937-1943.

Her name is Joan and she lives in Chicago. This is her diary and we are witness to her private thoughts both about her personal life and what is going on in the world at the time she is writing. The diary takes her from age 14 to 20 and is often padded with entries from her school journals when the regular diary has missing periods.

I have been reading partly for research on a novel that I have been working on that also features a teenage girl as narrator. I thought it might help me with some tone and dialogue problems that I am having but it so much more than that.

Joan is still relatable today, even if some of the expressions she uses are not. And actually even a few of them surprised me, such as her use of the word “uh.”

Like most of us, she is full of contradictions. On the one hand, she gets excellent grades and considers herself the “intellectual” type but her spelling is terrible in some places. We also hear from her own pen that she is not so good at Geometry or German. I can relate to the Geometry part and was relieved to hear that some smart people have trouble with it too.

The German classes surprised me also since, from my research, I have also found that the government tried to convince people with blood of the Axis powers in their veins from speaking the Axis language. So why were they ok with non-Germans learning how to speak German when they wanted German Americans to stop. Hmmm.

Not sure what else to say since there really is no main storyline to talk about. But I knew that I just had to bring this book to your attention since I think it is well worth reading and will probably surprise you as it did me.

The only downside I found was her reference to Winston Churchill as "pigface" but I reminded myself that she was a teenager and maybe that is what he looked like to teenage girls once upon a time.

I think I will just end with a quote. Here it is: “Oh well…someday I’ll be a genius. Bruce wants to be a psychiatrist (I can’t even spell it!) but I wouldn’t let him examine my brain though Frazier said I wouldn’t miss it. (Grrrr.)” That says it all, right?