The wisdom of Rowan Williams

It is Lent 2015 and I am currently reading two books by former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and enjoying and appreciating them immensely.

The Lion's World - A Journey into the Heart of Narnia (2013)

Folks today have not necessarily rejected Christianity (or religion or church) - they have rejected what they think Christianity (or religion or church) is.  Their "default setting" is a conviction that Christianity has nothing much to do with their reality as they see it.  "They need to be surprised into a realization that they have never actually reckoned with what Christianity is about."  p. 17

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

A scholar, doing research on ancient manuscripts in Oxford’s Bodleian Library seemed just the thing to attract a librarian and bibliophile – and so I started A Discovery of Witches thinking it might be a novel about Oxford and intrigue. Well – two witches, a vampire and several demons later, I realized this was not going to be your typical academic mystery.

Diana Bishop – the professor, and incidentally, witch, researching alchemy at Oxford’s famous library – requests and receives an ancient, alchemic text, which turns out to have been magically stored and sealed. Diana – a witch who has been denying and avoiding any hint of her own witchy powers since childhood, opens it. Evidentally all sorts of creatures are aware of her feat and start visiting the Bodleian to determine how she did it and what she does next. One of these visitors is a fellow professor, Matthew Clairmont – who happens to be a very old, very handsome and very powerful vampire. Their journey together to solve the riddle of the manuscript and Diana’s relationship to it and to the rest of the supernatural world is the stuff that legends (and very long novels) are made of.

I just read, on GoodReads, that this is Deborah Harkness’s first book – and if that is the case, it is truly remarkable. The 579 page novel is addictive and contains enough suspense, danger, history, magic and intrigue to keep me reading.

There is certainly a plethora of vampire stories going around, but this is not Twilight. This is an adult romance with a dark supernatural setting in which magic has consequences – both wonderful and terrifying – and nothing and no one is ever truly safe.

Looking for the King by David C. Downing

I had to read this. Its subtitle is An Inklings Novel and of course, that attracted me at once. Also, it was mentioned on the Mythopoeic Society website AND David Downing has written several books on CS Lewis (Into the Region of Awe, Into the Wardrobe, etc.,) and I simply needed to see what this novel was like.

I would give it mixed reviews. As a chance to glimpse, however briefly, what life might have been like for the Inklings at Oxford during WWII, the book was quite charming. But the story and the characters (unfortunately, the raison d’être for a novel) were uneven and not quite as fascinating.

Tom, an American in Britain, is writing a tour-guide on the legend of King Arthur and is visiting appropriate sites in England in the hopes of coming up with some new information – if not the source and identity of Arthur himself. Laura, also an American, is visiting her aunt and is anxious to find the source and meaning of several vivid dreams she has been having about sleeping kings, abbeys and horses and other Arthurian-type places and symbols.

They team up to explore the countryside and enlist – if not the actual help – then at least the support and opinions of CS Lewis, Charles Williams, JRR Tolkien and several other Inklings.

The plot does not really develop much beyond that – except for at the very end, wherein we discover a German spy and several staunch British policemen.

The biggest problem with this book is its lack of character development. Tom and Laura are pleasant enough folk, but they often say and do things that arise, not so much from who they are as characters, but what the author needs them to do at that moment. Much of what happens is scantily developed and seems to come out of left field. Many of the things that CS Lewis says and does seem to come directly from a biographer’s list of notes, rather than from his personality as described in the novel.

I did finish the book, and as I said, enjoyed meeting Lewis and Williams on their own turf, but would not recommend Looking for the King for anyone other than a Lewis or Tolkien fan.

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

I saw the movie and liked it. Sandra Bullock was good as the strong and forceful Southern mama (Leigh Anne Touhy) and the story was incredible.

But the book is better. First of all, the movie ignores the history of football the is the second major theme of the book. Lewis does a great job recounting the development of the left tackle position - defending the blind side of all right-handed quarterbacks - that occured as winning became paramount and quarterbacks became a highly valued commodity. And I learned a lot more as well. I now know what a "West Coast Offense" is and how much Bill Walsh (former coach of the San Francisco 49ers) contributed to the definition of modern football.

The movie, which focuses on Leigh Anne and Michael, also misses the contribution the entire Touhy Family makes to Michaels Oher's life, especially the Dad, Sean, and his rather eccentric and marvelous association with sports and kids in sports.



But most of all The Blind Side is a really inspiring picture of a fairly rich conservative white southern family and their decision to adopt Michael Oher - a poor, black kid who had spent so much most of his young life on the streets that basic concepts of home and school were totally foreign to him.