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Out of the Silent Planet

Perelandra

That Hideous Strength

by C.S. Lewis

I guess these books fall into the “Science Fiction” category, since they involve interplanetary travel. But it’s a misnomer to call it the Space Trilogy – the books are based on the idea that Space – what we think of as a cold vacuum – is a rich, vibrant, more-than-real world filled with life. And that’s just the start – there are so many other interesting concepts about the universe (spiritual and physical), explored in the series.

In the first two books you get to learn about the life on two other planets in our solar system – fantastical, personal journeys and full of suspense and discovery. And then the third volume, which is as long than the other two put together, is spent behind enemy lines, on the Silent Planet, known to us as Earth. A dark, disturbing and gripping tale.

This is the 3rd time I’ve read the series, and each time I get more out of it. I absolutely love reading Lewis. I gain so much from his approachable but deep writings – I grow in spiritual intelligence as a result of reading them.

I think what I most enjoyed about the books this time around was the thought processes of the characters. After being kidnapped to Mars, Ransom has lots of interesting thoughts about what it means to be human, since he meets new species that are human but not man – they are intelligent, moral, emotional beings with souls and spirits. Also, he learns about the super-human eldila. He experiences an amazing shift in perspective – an extra-terrestrial perspective. On his voyage to Venus, Ransom has to face a deadly enemy and work through isssues around his own fears, God’s power to work through him, and his role as the “protector” of the newly-created un-fallen humans. In That Hideous Strength, Mark and Jane discover spiritual dimensions of life that they never anticipated – they had been living such a superficial, empty life and the process of growing beyond that was perilous to say the least.

Even though these experiences are quite bizarre and probably won’t ever happen to me, I gain insight into life here on this planet from reading about the very imaginary but very believable universe that Lewis opens up for the reader to explore.

by Leo Tolstoy

The edition I read, 1300 pages, is Oxford “World’s Classics.” Now I know why… War and Peace has to be one of the most amazing books I have read. Where to begin. I guess the thing I enjoyed the most about it, and what impressed me the most, was Tolstoy’s depth of insight and perception of human nature, spanning social classes, men, women, and children. By the end you feel that you know the characters so well that you could recognize them in a crowd on the street. And there isn’t just one or two main characters that this applies to. There are whole families of main characters, but I didn’t feel challenged in keeping track of them. They are so believable, you just get to know them in spite of yourself. They start out as social acquaintences among the wealthy Russian gentry, and you follow them through battles, illnesses, romances, military hospitals, war captivity, death, debt, and life-changing perspective shifts. You have the experience of the War of 1812 right along with them, with things gradually getting worse and more intense, looking back and thinking, I never thought things would come to this. But here we are. I am still me, but I have grown and changed, and these others – I can remember a time before I met them but I know them so well now that I can’t remember how it felt to not know them.
This is my criteria for an excellent, compelling book: Through the telling of a story, the author imparts to the reader the same feelings and experiences that the characters are having. By reading the book you live out in a partial, but convincing and moving way, the same thoughts, emotions, and discoveries that the story describes. This is a subtle, hard-to-pin down quality. Something in the pacing, the way and timing in which information is revealed or concealed… Obviously it comes with the author’s skill in describing people and events. Choice of words, to evoke the right imagery that really resonates with the reader. That’s the magic of good writing – you don’t have to work to imagine. The visuals spring unbidden to your mind, as if they couldn’t be any other way. A few brief external words later, you have envisioned internal truths.

Many of the descriptions and characters resonated with me in an “ah, yes. This I know. True, that.” kind of a way. But other things, like the descriptions of the characters’ experiences in battle, taught me a lot of new things about what it must be like to be a man, a soldier, a soldier in combat. These kinds of things are timeless, I think. A socialite in the early 1800’s, a young army officer in the early 1800’s – we are not so different in these modern days. Human nature still rings true, when it is truly captured in words, and so masterfully as Leo Tolstoy has done in War and Peace.

I would recommend it to anyone.

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One tiny note: You have to be patient with Tolstoy. He kind of goes off on his ideas about the philosophy of history, especially in the later portion of the book. I found it interesting, but maybe repeated a few too many times…

by Oliver Sacks

Reading this book felt sort of like fate, because I’d first heard of the author several years ago while chatting with a co-worker about his current book club reading. I was intrigued by the title, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and even more intrigued when I was told that it wasn’t fiction – Sacks is a neurologist and writes about real people. A different co-worker at the same job (don’t know if he was in the same book club) once described one of Sacks’s subjects who is autistic but has an incredible affinity with animals, particularly cattle, and designs more humane “animal management systems.” This is a chapter in Anthropologist, as I learned a few weeks ago when chatting with my friend GP and she brought up the same story. So, I borrowed the book!

I was completely fascinated, reading the true stories of people like the Abstract Expressionist painter who loses his ability to see color. He couldn’t even remember what color looked like after the injury to his brain. Then there’s the surgeon who has Tourette’s syndrome – with extreme lunges and “tic” gesturing at all times, even while he’s driving, except when he’s operating. I had heard of Tourette’s many times but never really knew much about it. And there are several stories about autism – I learned a lot from these as well.

Sacks writes these case studies as a knowledgeable but sympathetic and sensitive observer. He clearly explains the patient’s situation and doesn’t hide the sad, “disabling” aspects of the brain conditions. But, he also does justice to the extraordinary, “super-human” traits that the patients have and how these elevate them to a plane that is just as human, but very different, from a normal person. As a neurologist he is of course interested in them as subjects of study, but he values them as people and friends and tries very hard to spend some “real life” time with them. Readers benefit from this and are able to get to know these unique individuals as well.

by Daphne du Maurier

I’m notorious for burning through exciting novels. I just can’t help it – I’m a fast reader and also a sucker for a good story. So once I have that itch to find out what happens next, it’s way to late for BN to remind me how I should be savoring the experience.

Rebecca was recommended to me by my mom as a great story with an exciting plot twist in it. Yep, she was right. (This isn’t going to be a very good book review, because I can’t tell you a thing about it. I’d hate to spoil the surprises for you.)

The story is told in the first person, by a young woman (whose name is not Rebecca) who lets us in on all her inner thoughts. She is very observant and perceptive, and I enjoyed reading her descriptions of people, her soul searching, and “deep thoughts” about memory, destiny, and “living in the moment.” Well, you might wonder, if Rebecca isn’t the main character, who is she? Well, I won’t say who but what: mysterious, beautiful, tragic, menacing…

I sometimes weigh the success of a work of art (images, writing, music…) by how well it makes me feel, see, or learn what the protagonists are feeling, seeing, or learning (whether that’s the main character or the author.) In this book, the narrator tells us what she’s feeling of course, but deeper than that, all the descriptions and dialog really pull the reader in and make you experience things along with her. I like that.

The book is set in the early 20th century, the late teens or early twenties. They have cars and telephones, but it’s still a different world, a good balance between recent and distant history. I enjoyed reading about the lifestyles of the rich and famous – spending summers in Monte Carlo and returning to their vast estates in rural England with a different room for each hour of the day, servants who have been with the family for generations, and masquerade balls for 500 guests. A good contrast to this opulence is our heroine, who is as new to the wealthy lifestyle as I would be and seeing it through her eyes is an enjoyable and entertaining experience. And, though my lips are sealed on the details, the storyline is intriguing, suspenseful and hauntingly memorable. Read it soon and let me know what you think!

or, Magister Ludi
by Hermann Hesse

I decided to read this book on BN’s recommendation. We own it, and he read it while an undergrad. He’d warned me that it was not exactly a thriller. So I tackled it as a learning experience and a challenge. While I was reading the initial section (a sort of introduction) I decided to take notes and look up all the unfamiliar words, as well as all the concepts and people that I have heard of but can’t really say what they are about. It turned out to be quite a lot of research – Wikipedia rocks!

So, the book. It’s a fictional biography of a man named Joseph Knecht who lives some time in the future. The world has been through another sort of Dark Age, and a special Order of intellectuals has been formed to protect the culture and discipline of the Mind, which (as we know) would otherwise be lost in the daily grind of business, politics, and practicality. The story tells of Knecht’s life: his education within the Castalian structure, and the formative relationships he has with the Masters, his colleagues, and contacts with the outside world. We watch his gradual rise to one of the top positions in the heirarchy, the master of the Glass Bead Game. There’s a bit of a twist in the plot at the end, and some of Knecht’s writings are appended as supplements to the narrative.

I enjoyed reading about Joseph’s world, this un-religion of esoteric knowledge, eastern-style mysticism, classical music, and of course the enigmatic Game which is supposed to bring every discipline into a harmonious dance or work of performance art. Hesse mostly leaves this up to the imagination, which I suppose was the right idea but I would have liked to know more about the details like the special visual language of symbols and notation they used to orchestrate the Game.

I didn’t find Joseph to be a very sympathetic character. He had a charmed life, loved everybody, and everybody loved him. The only real conflict in his life comes at the climax of the book and even then he handles it perfectly, says all the right things, feels fine, and nobody hates him.

One aspect of the book that sort of bothered me was the way Hesse handled the whole “biography” construct. Sometimes the narrators (they always refer to themselves as “we”) took great pains to explain where they had obtained a certain anecdote, and then other times you’d read along for entire chapters with none of that contrivance. Especially jarring is at the end of the book, when the “biographers” leave off their part and publish a “legend” written by students in the Order. All well and good, except the tone and style are practically identical for the two parts. I got the impression that as Hesse was writing he sometimes got so absorbed that he forgot it was supposed to be a biography.

I guess where I felt this book was lacking was that I didn’t have any emotional involvement with it. I was intrigued by the concepts, and I sure learned a lot of new words and facts about ancient philosophers, Baroque composers, and such. But I didn’t learn anything about myself or what it means to be human. Maybe that would have mattered less if it had been a real biography of a person who actually lived.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the book was at the very end, with the 3 short stories supposedly written by Knecht during his later education. The assignment was to write yourself a different “life” as a character in a different time and culture. These were great. The first one, where Knecht is a shaman “Rainmaker” in a stone-age culture, is the most exciting. The second one, with Josephus the Catholic hermit, was my favorite. It was intriguing and clever, and more spiritually and emotionally meaningful than the main novel! The third one, the Indian life, was pretty disturbing but convincingly Hindu in flavor.

In summary, I’m glad I read this book. It’s really different from most books I’ve read and it is very interesting, though not at all gripping. I think the only friend or family member I’d recommend it to would be BN, and he’s already read it.