C. S. Lewis: Readings for Meditation and Reflection

This book is a collection of C.S. Lewis's writings on various topics. It is a great intro to C.S. Lewis's works and philosophy. I enjoyed it mostly because I like reading a little bit each day. This book is perfect for that because each entry is not more than 2 pages. If you want a general survey of C.S. Lewis, then this is your book.

I can't believe that I've given less than 5 stars to a work by C.S. Lewis, as I consider him to be the finest author of the 20th century. However, the faults of this devotional book do not lie with Lewis and possibly not even with the editor, but primarily with the format. This book is essentially a collection of unrelated musings, isolated from among Lewis' many books and letters. One nice thing (at least for the way that I was using the book) is that the devotional readings are not designated to a specific day of the year, so there is no sense of having to read one (and only one) page each day. As for the critique, in short, C.S. Lewis did not write in devotional form. He wrote rather complicated thoughts that required some length to explain. As such, it is difficult to pull out one paragraph or even one page sections from his body of work that sufficiently stand alone. Of course, there are many of these short readings that maintain the spirit of Lewis, which allows the book to retain 4 stars. Unfortunately, some of the selections are very hard to understand without the full context from the original writing. And the disconnection from day to day is almost jarring, as the readings are not necessarily related in any way. In any case, it's still a book worth reading, particularly for someone unfamiliar with the work of Lewis. If this is the only Lewis that you'll read, then do it, and you'll be blessed. However, I would certainly recommend his works like "Mere Christianity" and "The Screwtape Letters" to be read in their entirety, rather than in truncated pieces like this book.