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  & 39 users

• Current

Type: children's

Status: favorite

Author: Roald Dahl

2008-03-13

• Current

Type: children's

Status: favorite

Author: Anna Dewdney

2008-03-06

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: favorite

Author: Shaun Tan

Description: An incredible book that says so much without using a single word. This really shows whatAn incredible book that says so much without using a single word. This really shows what it must feel like to be an immigrant....

2008-02-25

  & 1 users

• Current

Type: documentary

Status: favorite

Author: Lucy Grealy

Description: One of my all time favorite books. I read this when I was in middle school (almost 20 yearsOne of my all time favorite books. I read this when I was in middle school (almost 20 years ago now) and it made a deep impression on me....

2007-08-17

  & 25 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: favorite

Author: C. S. Lewis

Description: Who among us has never wondered if there might not really be a tempter sitting on our shouldersWho among us has never wondered if there might not really be a tempter sitting on our shoulders or dogging our steps? C.S. Lewis dispels all doubts. In The Screwtape Letters, one of his bestselling works, we are made privy to the instructional correspondence between a senior demon, Screwtape, and his wannabe diabolical nephew Wormwood. As mentor, Screwtape coaches Wormwood in the finer points, tempting his "patient" away from God.

Each letter is a masterpiece of reverse theology, giving the reader an inside look at the thinking and means of temptation. Tempters, according to Lewis, have two motives: the first is fear of punishment, the second a hunger to consume or dominate other beings. On the other hand, the goal of the Creator is to woo us unto himself or to transform us through his love from "tools into servants and servants into sons." It is the dichotomy between being consumed and subsumed completely into another's identity or being liberated to be utterly ourselves that Lewis explores with his razor-sharp insight and wit.

The most brilliant feature of The Screwtape Letters may be likening hell to a bureaucracy in which "everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment." We all understand bureaucracies, be it the Department of Motor Vehicles, the IRS, or one of our own making. So we each understand the temptations that slowly lure us into hell. If you've never read Lewis, The Screwtape Letters is a great place to start. And if you know Lewis, but haven't read this, you've missed one of his core writings. --Patricia Klein ...

2007-08-17

  & 4 users

• Current

Type: documentary

Status: favorite

Author: Dave Eggers

Description: This is my all-time favorite book. I love how irreverent it is. I read it in college andThis is my all-time favorite book. I love how irreverent it is. I read it in college and it was the perfect book for me at that time in my life....

2007-08-17