Chronicles Of Narnia - Should I Read It?

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Hey all. I have a lull in my TBR pile at the moment, and having just finished The Magician's Land, I realized I've never read the Narnia books. As someone who appreciates adult themes in books, will I be totally bored with them, or are they worth the read?

(null)

[Buckwheat]

Well, you will not find many especially adult themes in them, but as somebody who appreciates children's literature, I would recommend them. They have this special sense of childish wonder in them that I really like. So if you have some spare time, go for it. You can even just read one of them and then decide to not read the rest if you decide that you dislike it, they are not that long.

[polishgenius]

I have a massive amount of love for them. Some of it is nostalgia, but I'll always love the way magic is depicted, and the writing itself, prose-wise, is quality- simple, but beautiful a lot of the time.

They are pretty simple, and you're not going to find any in-depth thematic thinking (though there's stuff there to think about, even if -especially if you're not Christian, though in many cases even if you are I've found- the thinking is sometimes 'well, I disagree'). If by 'adult themes' you mean blood and sex and stuff, then no, there's none of that, though it doesn't avoid death or owt.

They're really not very long, so really I recommend you just give The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe a try...

[Pilusmagnus]

They are interesting books and well-thought ones, but with all the modern fantasy, they may seem a little stupid and overly childish. Give them a try but don't order the full series at once.

[polishgenius]

Give them a try but don't order the full series at once.

Unless you can get a hold of this hardback collection. I have it and it's absolutely gorgeous.

[Yersinia]

I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to my son recently. It was a welcome change from the things I'd been reading to him up until then, and it brought back fond memories. I probably wouldn't have read it again myself, but I did enjoy sharing it with him.

[Wilbur]

On the style front, Lewis was an outstanding writer, with well-rounded phrases and the ability to clearly convey meaning and wonder with his prose. This is in the context of the 1940s and early 1950s Britain, torn apart by war and bombings, riddled with class divisions, and from the pen of a man who was brought up in Norn Ireland and became an Oxbridge don, so his style is very British, but not distractingly so. Rather, it adds an air of legitimacy to his writing that few other writers then or since have been able to replicate.

(Unpopular aside - I will warn you that if you have read any of the Harry Potter books, you may experience some comparative concerns after the experience of reading Lewis, because the quality of the writing in Narnia will shine a spotlight on the literary deficiencies of the HP works. I have witnessed several people who read the HP books at the height of their popularity then read Narnia, and their discomfort was plain as they sought to deal with the cognitive dissanonce created by the mental comparisons, given the superficial similarities between the two. The HP books were a tremendous cultural touchstone for readers of a certain age and provided a valuable experience to them, so the relatively unkind resemblance isn't always a positive thing for these readers, unfortunately, and there is occasionally some backlash. Conversely, older readers like myself who were previous readers of Narnia sometimes had an indifferent reaction to the early HP books as a result of this same juxtaposition, as well as some inauspicious early marketing for HP by clueless book publishers who raised expectations inappropriately for a first-time author with comparisons to Lewis and Dahl. This isn't Rowling's fault, and indeed the HP books were a tremendous boon for both child literacy and the bookstore trade, so please don't take this as an attack on HP, just a note to forearm the reader.)

Lewis was also a world builder of hilarious depth and breadth. The Narnia cosmology includes elements from Greek and Roman mythology such as centaurs and the god of wine, Bachhus; Welsh history; Medieval romances; Victorian astrology; and even Der Ring des Nibelungen. While not quite as wild as the sentient bear who channels Merlin in That Hideous Strength, Lewis still presents a very fresh and vivid world that is still believable in terms of the characters and their actions. And furthermore, this was written during and in the aftermath to WWII in Britain, which was a country in ruins.

Finally, Lewis does intend each book to tell both an overt story and provide a specific theme that stands on its own. The books do not suffer from the modern plague of The Trilogy, where the reader must start on book one and end on book three. The books are deep enough that many doctoral theses have their bases in the books, yet flow smoothly enough to delight small children. Yes, some readers have concocted elaborate allegories to the Ptolemaic model of cosmology that stand up to literary criticism but seem to me to be a little...extreme, but again, the books can bear the weight of some fairly esoteric criticism, so that is one indicator of quality, as is the fact that they have been continuously in print since the 1950s.

[Howdyphillip]

YES

[polishgenius]

(Unpopular aside - I will warn you that if you have read any of the Harry Potter books, you may experience some comparative concerns after the experience of reading Lewis, because the quality of the writing in Narnia will shine a spotlight on the literary deficiencies of the HP works. I have witnessed several people who read the HP books at the height of their popularity then read Narnia, and their discomfort was plain as they sought to deal with the cognitive dissanonce created by the mental comparisons, given the superficial similarities between the two. The HP books were a tremendous cultural touchstone for readers of a certain age and provided a valuable experience to them, so the relatively unkind resemblance isn't always a positive thing for these readers, unfortunately, and there is occasionally some backlash. Conversely, older readers like myself who were previous readers of Narnia sometimes had an indifferent reaction to the early HP books as a result of this same juxtaposition, as well as some inauspicious early marketing for HP by clueless book publishers who raised expectations inappropriately for a first-time author with comparisons to Lewis and Dahl. This isn't Rowling's fault, and indeed the HP books were a tremendous boon for both child literacy and the bookstore trade, so please don't take this as an attack on HP, just a note to forearm the reader.)

As I'm sure you knew someone was going to, I've got to disagree here. Not that Narnia is better- I prefer them myself - but I don't see the comparison. They're not really at all similar except for being fantasy with kids in - the plot and the tone are barely comparable between the two and they're not even really aimed at the same audiences; there's some overlap but Narnia's target range, in my view, skews considerably younger. I can't really see how someone is going to find it troubling to read a fantasy series that is a little bit better (or worse) than their favourite.

Lewis was also a world builder of hilarious depth and breadth.

While I love what he created, I can't say there's much depth to it in terms of worldbuilding. Sure, he drew from a lot of influences, but it's really just a sketch.

[Wilbur]

As I'm sure you knew someone was going to, I've got to disagree here. Not that Narnia is better- I prefer them myself - but I don't see the comparison. They're not really at all similar except for being fantasy with kids in - the plot and the tone are barely comparable between the two and they're not even really aimed at the same audiences; there's some overlap but Narnia's target range, in my view, skews considerably younger. I can't really see how someone is going to find it troubling to read a fantasy series that is a little bit better (or worse) than their favourite.

Well, in the late 90s Scholastic Inc. spent a lot of time and marketing development funds telling librarians, bookstore owners, and teachers that HP was directly comparable to Narnia and Dahl. So that sort of 1:1 comparo was a thing for a while.

I agree with your analysis of the two entirely, in that they are dissimilar in tone and that the audience for HP is preteens and teens, while Narnia is either for younger children and their parents or grad students who need to write a paper. However, that is not something that ever stopped a marketing team with a budget to spend.

At the time I was doing a lot of coaching for a traveling team, and the kids would read on the van trips to away matches, which of course I encouraged. I can think of three kids who were especially not academically inclined from those days for whom the HP books were the gateway to reading for pleasure and a resulting, detectable, marginal academic improvement. And the HP books led them and other, more proficient, readers of the team to Lloyd Alexander, Lewis, Le Guin, etc. So this was when I saw this mental comparison take place, although usually with the more academically inclined kids.

And of course the old text BBS like Camelot, Mystic Choice, Tau Ceti Center and their later descendants, like this very forum, had as a trope "HP is / is not like Narnia" that served to fan a lot of flames.

[Altherion]

Yes, you should read it. It doesn't have much in the way of adult themes or when it does, they are generally treated in a child-friendly way. Since you've read The Magicians, Quentin's complaints about how Fillory isn't what he expected are because his expectations are based on Narnia (although of course if you read all three books, his reality turns out to be not all that different). However, a great deal of more "adult" fantasy is influenced by Narnia and some of it is even written more or less in response to C.S. Lewis. The Magicians is the most obvious of the latter, but there's also Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials and probably a few less famous ones. It's probably worth reading just to get all of the references to it.

Also, unlike most modern fantasy, these books are short: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is only about 200 pages. Give it a try; I doubt you will be bored.

[HexMachina]

Well, you will not find many especially adult themes in them, but as somebody who appreciates children's literature, I would recommend them. They have this special sense of childish wonder in them that I really like. So if you have some spare time, go for it. You can even just read one of them and then decide to not read the rest if you decide that you dislike it, they are not that long.

:agree:

I loved these books and re-read them often as a child. I'll always keep my big hardback cover of them. "For the grandchildren" as parents always say :p

What I particularly like is that each story can be read without reading the ones before it, and also that they are all of a similar quality. I'd be hard pressed to say which ones stand out the most, though I think I probably read The Horse and His Boy and The Silver Chair the most.

[polishgenius]

However, a great deal of more "adult" fantasy is influenced by Narnia and some of it is even written more or less in response to C.S. Lewis. The Magicians is the most obvious of the latter, but there's also Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials and probably a few less famous ones. It's probably worth reading just to get all of the references to it.

Those are the direct responses to the series, but I'd hesitantly say that, beyond that, with Narnia, Lewis is as influential on modern fantasy as Robert E Howard and hot on the heels of Tolkien.

[MinDonner]

I loved these books as a child. As an adult, I find them exceedingly trite and problematic. Just putting that out there amongst this chorus of yay.

[lady narcissa]

Yes, I absolutely think you should read them. And I would start with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe not The Magician's Nephew (some editions of the series reorder them).

I read them when I was a child but as an adult, I reread them every few years. As a child, I read them for the story and characters. Now as an adult I can still enjoy those aspects but I find different things to take from them. I like what Lev Grossman had to say about Lewis' writing craft and use of language - these are some of the things I like to look at now that I never would have examined when I was younger:

Why is Lewis so important to me? In part, it’s because—technically, from the point of view of craft—he tells the story with truly exemplary economy. By the time we’re only six or seven pages into The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, we already know all four Pevensies, we know how each child feels about the other three, and he’s gotten Lucy through the wardrobe and into Narnia. With incredible speed, he acquaints us with the characters—just one or two well-placed details, and we’re able to know each one—and delves right away into the adventure.

Even more than that, it’s the way he uses language—which is nothing like the way fantasists used language before him. There’s no sense of nostalgia. There’s no medieval floridness. There’s no fairy tale condescension to the child reader. It’s very straight, and very clean—there’s no Vaseline on the lens. You see everything clearly, not with sparkles or a flowery sense of wonderment, but with very specific physical details.

You can read the rest of the interview with Grossman, here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/08/going-home-with-cs-lewis/375560/

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Agreed with Lady N, entirely. Read them. They are rich both linguistically and thematically.

[felice]

there's stuff there to think about, even if -especially if you're not Christian, though in many cases even if you are I've found- the thinking is sometimes 'well, I disagree'

Yes, there's plenty in the books to disagree with most profoundly, but as a militant atheist, I still think they're very much worth reading.

[The Wolves]

Yes read them

[The Marquis de Leech]

As a child, they're awesome. The moment you're old enough to notice Lewis' Christian propaganda, they lose a substantial amount of their awesomeness.

In other words, they're damn good fun, so long as you don't try to analyse them.

[Shryke]

I loved these books as a child. As an adult, I find them exceedingly trite and problematic. Just putting that out there amongst this chorus of yay.

Stay the fuck away from The Last Battle. Only to be read ironically.