This compendium of Lewis's books is a must read for all Christians. Short clips require very deep thinking about a variety of important Christian subjects. You will not be able to read quickly or even just once. Meditation and Reflection is an apt title.

Watching the film 'Shadowlands', or seeing the play of the same name, gives you the impression that Lewis was remote and awkward around people.

Reading this fine youth biography shows you that underneath he had an innate sense of wonder that was stifled by his upbringing and work. It found an outlet in his books for children and camaraderie with the 'Inkspots'.

This is a revealing biography because it is written for young people. A suitable vehicle for finding out about the author of the Narnia Chronicles! I found it much less precious than other books on Lewis - probably because this was written by a fellow native Northern Irishman, rather than a fan.

It also wrecks several pompous academic careers by including a letter from Lewis to a young girl, explaining what each of the Narnia books is about.

Moving, heartwarming and fun.

Chad Walsh Reviews C.S. Lewis With a memoir by Damaris Walsh McGuire Compiled with an introduction by Joe R. Christopher. Altadena, California, The Mythopoeic Press, 1998 ISBN 1-887726-05-5, pb, 52 pp., $4.95

If C.S. Lewis was indeed 'apostle to the skeptics', as Chad Walsh once wrote of him, then Walsh was his first American disciple. The Beloit College professor's 1946 Atlantic Monthly essay thus headlined, later reprinted a year later in Reader's Digest, certainly gave many Stateside readers their initialt inkling of the writing of C.S. Lewis. Later the writer would expand the article into a book so titled, the first on Lewis. This slim book is hardly slight, nor to be slighted. Its twenty reviews, most first published in The New York Times Book Review, show a thoughtful and sympathetic reader's first response to everything from the gradual revelation of the Chronicles of Narnia to a complex appreciation of the autobiography Surprised by Joy seasoned by a friendship of a dozen years. Of special interest are two reviews of Till We Have Faces, one from The New York Herald Tribune Book Review and a more reasoned, reflective piece done later for Marquette University's journal Renascence. In the latter, reacting to the "bewilderment and frustration" this novel caused some longtime Lewis devotees, Walsh calls this Lewis' "most difficult" book and concludes by suggesting "...its quality...resembles G.K. Chesterton less and Charles Williams more than any of the author's previous work. Perhaps it is true that all religious insight, as it grows as deepens, moves toward music, liturgy, or silence. The prose writer finds the words bending and breaking with the burden they must carry. Lewis has not reached that point, but Till We Have Faces represents a far stride toward a direct perception of the love that moves the sun and the other stars." (20) While many reviews are but three paragraphs, Walsh packs a lot into them. His reviews of Narnia are informed by reading them to his four daughters as they grow. One hitherto unpublished review, a corrected typescript on Letters to an American Lady from the Wade Center at Wheaton College, adds to the value of the trove. Daughter Damaris Walsh McGuire's introduction "Memories of Joy, Jack, and Chad" is a charming memoir of her father's friendship with Lewis. Walsh, we learn, first suggested Joy Davidman write Lewis directly. In 1955, when the Walsh family visited Lewis and Joy in Oxford, Damaris writes that after a golden afternoon of charades in the Magdalen College deer park "my wise and observant mother [said] 'I smell a marriage.' She was right." (xvii) Joe R. Christopher's foreword is a lucid, succinct summary of the similarities--both poets, both deeply religious men who had rejected Christianity as boys--and the differences--Walsh was liberal and political, Lewis was neither--between the two unlikely friends. Indeed, Christopher's short critical biography of Walsh will send some readers to the challenging but rewarding task of seeking out Walsh's superb poetry, such as the stark 1970 elegy "Kent" and The Psalm of Christ, forty Lenten poems, one on each verse of Ps. 22. Quibble: the exact date of these reviews' original publication might be of interest to some Lewis analysts. But that mite of a quibble aside, this small (52 pp., four by six inches) but lively book fits easily in pocket or purse (I'm a pocket kind of guy, myself) and sheds light on Lewis, including the illumination of a little girl who saw him do a charade enacting a bullfinch. No reader of Lewis should lack it.

--reviewed by Mike Foster

(To order, send ($4.95 plus $1 S&H) payable to the Mythopoeic Society to: Joan Marie Verba, PO Box 1363, Minnetonka, MN, 55345-0363)

The book's publisher notes that, "This study of his [C.S. Lewis's] writings provides a perceptive and illuminating guide to readers who may be unacquainted with Lewis; a help to those wishing to understand him better; and an evaluation for those who want a survey of his works as a whole. Clyde S. Kilby examines Lewis's Christian works one by one, compares them with each other and with books by other authors, and discovers and elucidates the themes that recur throughout the main body of Lewis's writings." Some of the books discussed include the seven Chronicles of Narnia, the three volume Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces, The Great Divorce, The Pilgrim's Regress, Surprised by Joy, The Four Loves, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Miracles, The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, and Reflections on the Psalms.

I found this fine volume to be most enlightening, a helpful companion to understanding the things Lewis wrote about. It is less than 200 pages long, practical, insightful, and definitely worth obtaining whether you are just being introduced to the works of C.S. Lewis or have been reading him for many years.

C. S. Lewis puts forth Christian Ideals in a series that has enough adventure and fantasy for young readers and yet is well enough written to inspire adults as well. A Great Christmas Gift.

I am using this book for daily devotional and find it very refreshing and informative. It provides a wonderful sampling of the lives and theology of these great figures of the Christian faith. I look forward to working through the tome(p.400), and then reading more of the original works of these mighty Christians(Julian of Norwich, Thomas a Kempis, Bonhoeffer, etc.)

The children of the first book (Peter, Susan, Edmond and Lucy) are back in Narnia. For them it has been just a couple of months, but for the inhabitants of that magic world has been hundreds of years. Now the telmarins rules, and the old narnians lived hiding. The true heir of the throne, prince Caspian, with and army of dwarves and talking animals, would have to fight... and readers, all ages, all over the world, would again be thrilled by this wonderful story of magic and reality.

Whether you rate this a 10 or a 2 depends on your reading tastes. No doubt many people would find the topic uninteresting, and if the topic or the author are not subjects you enjoy, then don't bother to buy it. Not being a lit. buff myself, my attraction for the book was the author's commentary, with the goldmine of quotable material found therein. This is an impressive volume of literary history, and I doubt that anyone else could have done such a thorough job and still made the topic come to life with such vigorous exposition. Opinionated? You bet. That's part of what makes it enjoyable to read. If you are interested in obtaining a copy of the book, you may want to contact Oxford University Press directly. As one of the twelve volumes constituting the "Oxford History of English Literature" series, they have continued to print it over the years.

Nowadays the science and research of the quantitative relationhips between chemical structure of compounds and their physico-chemical, chromatographic (or any other scientifically measurable) behaviour are in the ascendant. This rising begun with the wide-spread of cheap computational capacity and resulting the development of many new multivariate mathematical-statistical methods. These are more and more refined and more and more easier to use them and give more and more information to the hand of scientists. The main problem, however, still exists: there is no statistically acceptable mmethod for measuring the significance level of multivariate methods. Therefore it is basically important for anybody, who wants to use multivariate methods to draw inferences from its results, to exactly know its mathematical background and employment fields.

These books are extremely useful for anybody who wants to learn about the newest methods and to use more suitably the 'older' ones. Finally, this opus is worthy continuation of Chatfield & Collins's book of "Introduction to Multivariate Analysis" and hoping become a basic handbook for any scientists.

"Humble Feelings" is more than a coffe table collection of pictures and devotions; it is an inspired journey that unites us "with the beauty we see." Each photograph and selection are balanced, as if intended by both the writer and photographer. I was recently given "Humble Feelings" as a gift because of my love of nature and the writings of C.S Lewis. "Humble Feelings" draws me once again to both.