The Weight of Glory Review

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(More customer reviews)Lewis's shorter works were generally originally composed as speeches or as articles for periodicals. Various sets of them were collected and published in book form both during his life and after his death. Trying to determine what works are in what collections is difficult - most works appear in more than one collection, some works appear under more than one title, and some collections appear under more than one title.
To aid readers, in this review I've listed the works in this collection, with notes indicating other collections they have appeared in.
Table of Contents:
"The Weight of Glory" (1), (2), (3), (4)
"Learning in War-Time" (1), (4), (5)
"Why I am Not a Pacifist" (4), (6), (7)
"Transposition" (1), (2), (3), (4)
"Is Theology Poetry?" (2), (3), (4)
"The Inner Ring" (1), (2), (3), (4)
"Membership" (1), (4), (5)
"On Forgiveness" (4), (5)
"A Slip of the Tongue" (2), (3), (4)
Notes:
(1) The original, 1949 version of this work included only these works. The other works were added in the 1980 edition. Also, the 1949 version was published in the U. K. under the title "Transposition and Other Addresses".
(2) also published in "They Asked for a Paper"
(3) also published in "Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Other Pieces"
(4) also published in "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces"
(5) also published in "Fern-Seed and Elephants and Other Essays"
(6) also published in "Timeless at Heart: Essays on Theology"
(7) also published in "Compelling Reason"
Recommendations:
If you are interested in Lewis's shorter works, my best advice is to get "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", which, as of the time of this writing, is available from Amazon UK but not Amazon US. That collection consists of about 130 short works by Lewis. The works in that collection are mostly, but not exclusively, Christian.
If your interest in Lewis's shorter works is restricted to those on Christianity, and your budget or enthusiasm does not run to "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", then my second-best advice is to get any or all of the following (they don't overlap significantly, and between them they include most of Lewis's shorter Christian writings):
"God in the Dock - Essays on Theology and Ethics"*
"The World's Last Night and Other Essays"
"Christian Reflections"
"The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses"
* Be careful - there is a UK Fontana paperback lurking about called "God in the Dock - Essays on Theology" that is substantially shorter than the "God in the Dock - Essays on Theology and Ethics" collection. A full version of "God in the Dock - Essays on Theology and Ethics" was published in the UK under the title "Undeceptions - Essays on Theology and Ethics".

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Selected from sermons delivered by C. S. Lewis during World War II, these nine addresses offer guidance and inspiration in a time of great doubt.These are ardent and lucid sermons that provide a compassionate vision of Christianity.

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Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer Review

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(More customer reviews)This is one of those books where I found myself taking an hour to read a paragraph, which I had previously read. I just needed to ruminate on Lewis' thoughts. It's not theological in the sense of Mere Christianity or The Four Loves- he is clear here and elsewhere that he does not want to write a devotional book and indeed thinks he has little to offer on the subject, as he is untrained in these areas. So while he covers the same areas as Richard Foster's Prayer, this book has a decidedly different feel. It is personal, as if it were a collection of real letters.
And thus these are just letters. Often Lewis doesn't fully explain his ideas in an understandable way, to make it appear as if he is not writing to the general public, but only to Malcolm- a friend with whom he has a lot in common, with that secret language that all friends have. I appreciated too how personal asides were imagined, like "Your son is very welcome. We do *not* dress for dinner normally." and "Please tell Betty I do not need a bed downstairs, I am feeling much better." and, contrary to what Walter Hooper would have us believe, references to his conjugal life with his former wife.

Lewis' musings have the advantage of coming at the end of his life, with the full wisdom available. I especially liked his thoughts on getting whatever we ask for in faith vs. Jesus prayer in Gethsemane, difficulties in prayer focus, and the effectatiousness of our prayers. In the end, we want to be heard, even more than having our prayers answered. Lewis is simultaneously so deep and so clear. As he said, he wrote for the common man. So as I read him, I find myself constantly thinking, "Yes, I didn't believe that before, but I see that now."

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In the form of warm, relaxed letters to a close friend, Lewis meditates on many puzzling questions concerning the intimate dialogue between man and God. Lewis also considers practical and metaphysical aspects of private prayer, petitionary prayer, the Lord's Prayer, and other forms of prayer. "A beautifully executed and deeply moving book" (Saturday Review).

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A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works Review

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(More customer reviews)A C. S. Lewis devotee knows that Lewis died the same day as President Kennedy. Though it's not mentioned in the jacket copy --- and the book includes no introduction --- that forty-year commemoration might have been the catalyst for this new compilation of 366 daily readings drawn from what the publisher calls his (capital-letter) Signature Classics: MERE CHRISTIANITY, THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, THE GREAT DIVORCE, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, MIRACLES and A GRIEF OBSERVED, plus (apparently perceived in some other category) THE WEIGHT OF GLORY and THE ABOLITION OF MAN.
Drawing on this bank, this book provides food for thought more than for devotion. Readers looking for a devotional aid will need to make a conscious leap to apply the material to a personal line of prayer. And yet the presented theological, philosophical and sociological points, all focused by Lewis's Christian worldview, do serve to draw the reader to a keener awareness of God's presence, character and role; his being, creations and relationships.
The one-page selections have been deftly arranged by Patricia Klein, who in times past edited the annual Cahill calendars featuring quotable lines from Lewis and his Inkling cohorts. She has given each reading a clear but not clever title that orients readers going into a selection and grounds them coming out: "Love the Sinner . . .", "The Real Test", "Nice Is Not Enough", and "How Marriage Reconciles."
Her selections are well organized. Each stands on its own, but many, usually from one source, for four or five days at a time thematically build on one another. We spend a week in March, for example, noting the pitfalls of pride (from MERE CHRISTIANITY) before being introduced to "Humility 101" (from THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS).
Although the first SCREWTAPE entry (January 13) includes a paragraph that explains the first-person, demonist voice of this novel, an unwary reader unfamiliar with that book's tongue-in-cheek style can be confused later on. Trying to head off said confusion, Klein has added an italicized tag onto each SCREWTAPE reading (i.e., "Screwtape reveals a powerful tool for distraction").
I personally connected most with Lewis, the man, in his readings from A GRIEF OBSERVED, in which he mourns the death of his wife. But I also connected with Lewis's God in selections from MERE CHRISTIANITY and THE WEIGHT OF GLORY.
The volume is nicely packaged: a ribbon bound into the spine to mark your place, a table of contents on a part-title page at the beginning of each month, three book-end indices. When I turned a page, I first glanced to the bottom, anticipating an occasional date-specific Lewis-biographical event: a book publication, an academic achievement, a family birth or death --- November 22, 1963, "Lewis dies at 5:30 P.M. at The Kilns, one week short of his sixty-fifth birthday. . . "
Most readings are three, four, five times longer than the one I cite below (September 27), which is the shortest in the book. As compiled in A YEAR WITH . . . Lewis only occasionally quotes Scripture and never more aptly than here, speaking of the apostle Peter's seaside conversation with Jesus: "There are questions at issue between Christians to which I do not think we have been told the answer. There are some to which I may never know the answer: if I asked them, even in a better world, I might (for all I know) be answered as a far greater questioner was answered: 'What is that to thee? Follow thou Me.' "
--- Reviewed by Evelyn Bence

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