John Barach Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

John Barach

What was C. S. Lewis reading and enjoying in 1955? Mary Norton's *The Borrowers* and *The Borrowers Afield*. Liked them so much he wrote to his friend Ruth Pitter to see if she'd read them.

John Barach

Besides Shakespeare, whose plays are most worth reading, say, for a high school student? I'm looking for something rich, rewarding, fun (perhaps even funny). Moliere? Christopher Fry? Charles Williams? Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral?

John Barach

Now that we've finished The Wolves of Willoughby Chase -- and loved it -- our evening read-aloud is Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday. The kids were excited to delighted to recognize that the distant figures spotted in the rowboat and on the island were the Swallows and Amazons.

John Barach

C. S. Lewis, contrasting Graham Greene's *The Power and the Glory* with the work of Evelyn Waugh: "Greene loves and understands his most repulsive characters ... better than Waugh does his favourites."

John Barach

C. S. Lewis, contrasting Graham Greene's *The Power and the Glory* with the work of Evelyn Waugh: "Greene loves and understands his most repulsive characters ... better than Waugh does his favourites." Accurate assessment?

John Barach

Reading LIEUTENANT HORNBLOWER for the first time, I think, since I was in my late teens. I had forgotten how good Forester's Hornblower novels are.

John Barach

Dorothy Sayers did not like Pauline Baynes's illustrations for the Narnia books and thought the cover illustration for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was "blasphemous." Lewis himself (somewhat tentatively?) agreed. He wasn't a fan of Baynes's illustrations in general.

John Barach

The book you have read most often (other than the Bible)? Mine would have to be A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond. Which I read several times when I was young, read once more with each new child, and am reading yet again with my youngest.

John Barach

I mentioned the other day that, if I were making a Favorite Short Stories collection, I would include Gene Wolfe's "Westwind" and Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry." Let me add that I would also include this one, Graham Greene's "The Second Death." Read it. https://t.co/tk0S0LDJDK