booktastic

You’ll have to excuse me for not posting yesterday. I had to run errands during my lunchbreak, so I thought I would post when I got home… but, being exhausted by having only about three hours sleep the night before, I found myself lying blearily on the couch for most of the remainder of the evening.

That said, it was a pretty good reading day. On the bus home, I was able to read significantly longer than I have been. This is possibly because I began to get very interested in the book, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice - interested enough that I actually forgot how poorly I was feeling (until I began to feel very poorly indeed, and had to stop).

In addition, I was extremely delighted to discover that Youtube has a few sections from my favorite audiobook of all time: The Screwtape Letters as read by John Cleese. This was especially exciting for me because although I desperately love this recording, I have never owned a copy (only borrowed a library copy) and now it is out-of-print and quite unavailable.

The nice thing about listening to a recording of something you like to read is that sometimes in reading you will pass over things that you can’t ignore when you hear it. Thus it is with The Screwtape Letters.

(In case you’re not familiar with the book, it’s written as a series of letters from a senior devil to a young devil who is in the process of tempting his first soul. It’s funny yet serious - and simultaneously light while being very heavy indeed. It will make you examine your soul in ways you never imagined. It’s also exceedingly British, as the senior devil [Screwtape] sounds for all the world like a stuffy old British civil servant [which I believe was the intention]. One of the ultimate books on religion. If you haven’t read it - you should. I don’t care if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Agnostic or Athiest - you should read this book!) 

I had read the book before, of course, when I listened to the recording - but John Cleese’s reading of it really brought it to life. Certain passages had gone clean over my head when I read it, but were really hammered home when I listened to the recording.

Happily, my job here does not hinder me from having headphones on, so I was able to listen to the “letters” that are available on YouTube. There are only about seven of them, unfortunately, but they are all good. Here is an excellent one; this is letter seven - an excellent treatsie on how “Noble Causes” can actually advance the downfall of the soul. (I would advise you to ignore the little visual display that the video’s author came up with. I would have been entirely content to have John Cleese’s voicevoice and a blank screen.  — Mrs. Hall

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