Kindle Flash: CSL’s Ransom Trilogy Now Available as EBooks!

April 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

This time last week we learned that Joanne Rowling’s seven Harry Potter novels were available as eBooks on Kindle and other platforms and, in a marvelous bit of synchronicity, that three Unlocking Press titles, Harry Potter For Nerds, God and Harry Potter at Yale, and Harry Potter Smart Talk also came on line as eBooks at both Amazon’s Kindle store and Barnes and Noble’s Nook outlet, all for less than $10 and Smart Talk for only $4.99. Check those out for the best in Potter Punditry!

This week’s Kindle news is that HarperCollins has at last issued C. S. Lewis’ remarkable science fiction-fantasy classic, known variously as the Ransom Trilogy, Space Trilogy, or the Cosmic Trilogy, as Kindle books on Amazon: Out of the Silent Planet $7.99, Perelandra $7.99 , and That Hideous Strength $7.99. I suspect that Hunger Games newcomers to Hogwarts Professors will not know why new availability in interest in these books is an exciting event and I wonder if even some old hands forget the importance of C. S. Lewis’ first mythopoetic fictions. It’s a delight, in brief,  because of their alchemical artistry, ring composition, smuggled Christian content, and their remarkable if perhaps only indirect influence on books that we love, most notably Harry Potter and Hunger Games.

Three Reasons to Buy this Series of Books and Read them (or ‘Read them Again,’ for many of you): [Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis

Start Over! C. S. Lewis College Idea a ‘No Go’

February 24, 2012 by 1 Comment

Way back in the day (April, 2010), we celebrated here the announcement that Hobby Lobby philanthropist David Green had purchased a beautiful campus in central Massachusetts’ Connecticut River Valley for a C. S. Lewis (CSL) College that would be devoted to the Arts and Humanities. It turns out, however, that the gift came with prudent strings; if the CSL Foundation could not raise sufficient funds for college operations by January 2012, the deal was off and the donors would look for another recipient.

Which outcome, it appears, has come to pass. Read the story here. It seems the CSL Foundation is still looking for supporters though the philanthropists have opened the doors to other proposals for the remarkable property. Unless I misread the article, it is a matter of several million dollars. Forgive me for thinking that the CSL Estate, flush with its movie millions (?), might have been expected to step in here?

Oh, well. Your thoughts?

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Hog Pro Notes

‘DA/AD’ Letter to C. S. Lewis: Hogwarts-Narnia Link?

November 19, 2011 by 8 Comments

I was caught off-guard at last week’s wonderful From Wands to Quills Harry Potter Conference at beautiful James Madison University when I learned that the two hours I thought I had to speak turned out to be forty minutes. Caught flat-footed, I was left with little choice but to abandon my original spider-outline on Hogwarts and the modern university and to share instead with friends in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a letter I found in the restroom of the Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton, Illinois. I was there (in the Center, not the restroom) looking for evidence of C. S. Lewis’ hermetic artistry in the Wade collection of Inkling books, letters, and diaries.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Hog Pro Notes

Gryffindor Crest: A Red Lion — or a Golden Lion?

October 9, 2011 by 6 Comments

It’s “Outrageous Hogwarts Professor Gaffes’ time, again, All-Pros! Not a month after learning I don’t know my King’s Cross stations from my underground tubes, I find out that I have symbolism dyslexia — or is it alchemical myopia? Either way, I’ve got red and gold egg on my face.

Kati from Germany writes:

A note on Gryffindor – the lion isn’t red, as you say (first time on p 12 or 21 of Looking for God, I think) – but rather its ‘natural’ golden colour set on a red background. As to why the symbol of Gruffindor isn’t a Griffin… I guess it would be too confusing with Ravenclaw’s Eagle.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Literary Alchemy

New C. S. Lewis Work in Print: Aeneid Selections

May 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

This is exciting news. A. T. Reeves has edited C. S. Lewis’ translations of Virgil’s Aeneid, which consist of long passages from Books 1, 2, and 6. I assume these are the best known sections, most notably, the fall of Troy, the flight to Carthage, death of Dido, and the trip to the Underworld.

As eager as I am to read this work, about which I had never heard or read mention that I can recall, the book has already delivered edifying fruit. Prof. David Downing, C. S. Lewis scholar and accomplished novelist himself, has written a review of the Yale University Press title, a survey explaining CSL’s fascination with this poem and many of the correspondences existing between Lewis’ understanding of the Aeneid and my favorite adventure in the Narniad, The Silver Chair. Read that review here: ‘Journeys to the Underworld and the Silver Chair.’ H/T to Rev. David!

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Hero's Journey