What 📔book are you reading right now?

Elbereth Vala Varda said:

isn't Narnia a land more for children and the young?

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Back, and back - to your question.
We need to start with 'definitions/explanations.' What is meant by "Narnia" above?

If the meaning is "Narnia the book series" yes, it's more for children and the young. More so than The Hobbit was even.

If the meaning is "the Land of Narnia itself" however, it is full of old people, fat people, skinny people, mean people, youths, some good people, and animalia of all ages, sizes, and abilities to speak. In this sense it is not "a land more for children" - though given its focus on bringing events happening to and around "the children" mostly to the fore, it can feel like it at times. But like Tolkien, Lewis brings forward all the same morality issues, interplay of cause and event, action and response, situation with opportunity for success or failure, to be evaluated, recognized and understood just as we see it in our supposed 'real world.'

Regarding the descriptions of 'the land' itself - i.e. descriptions of those places where the poor live, lifestyles, the establishments of the wealthy, the cities, plains, distances, trees, forests, shrubs and bushes introduced, etc. - i.e. the "panorama" within which the story is set - well - it does seem pleasant - though I find them less well described and so less relatable than much of Tolkien's work. They are left just a little more "to the imagination" due to a bit less textual definition.

I don't really think I find them more 'for the children' except with perhaps the animalia... the talking beasts of every kind. This requires an adult to set aside a great deal of repressive cultural pressure and experience to 'conform' to societal norms - which the adult has a much harder time doing than the youth.

(This is what makes Fantasy at large difficult for so many. Oddly, there is a group that can receive 'science fiction', which frequently contains a great deal of equally "idiotic" conceptualization and acceptance - but it's not "Fantasy". "Science Fiction" tends to 'sound' so much more "realistic and adult" than "fantasy". After all, it contains 'science' does it not? That too is by and large a result of societal pressure, background and experience.)

Such a seemingly simple question you asked... nothing seems to stand alone.

I suppose in short, for Ent, the 'simple' answer would be 'No.' Overall I do not see "Narnia as a land more for children and the young"... unless we're talking about Narnia the 'Book Series' itself and its general target audience.

I first read the Chronicles of Narnia when I was 30.
I have read them dozens of time since then, both as the series, reading all seven sequentially (and in the order Lewis specified), but also individually, just pulling one off the shelf and reading it. I continue to thoroughly enjoy all of them, altho' I do have my favorites.
And I can shift from those books to Tolkien and back again quite easily.
If one has a well developed imagination there really is not any difficulty at all.

I know he wrote them as children's books. He did not, however, write them just for children.
Perhaps it would help to read what he himself said about them.
His essay began with his saying there are bad ways and good ways to write a children's book.
He goes on to describe his way...

The third way, which is the only one I could ever use myself, consists in writing a children’s story because a children’s story is the best art-form for something you have to say: just as a composer might write a Dead March not because there was a public funeral in view but because certain musical ideas that had occurred to him went best into that form.

[…]
Where the children’s story is simply the right form for what the author has to say, then of course readers who want to hear that, will read the story or re-read it, at any age… I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only when you are waltzing is a bad waltz. (Emphasis mine)

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But then into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development: When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Very intrigued at everything said. I may need to give those books a reread some day.

Elbereth Vala Varda said:

may need to give those books a reread

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Would be a valuable investment of time. Not only for the refresher on 'all things Narnia' but another review of Lewis's language skill.
He's pretty adept..!

I imagine so! Narnia does look worth a bit of some additional study.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Is that what you are currently reading?

I am still plowing through CoH

Elbereth Vala Varda said:

I imagine so! Narnia does look worth a bit of some additional study.

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Good lord, don't study it!
Read it (or re-read it) for fun, for pleasure of Lewis' writing, for the pure joy of getting lost in something!
But study it??!!! As Charlie Brown would say: Good Grief! 😉

I see. Perhaps I should stick to reading it, in my study. You may be right.

Elbereth Vala Varda said:

I see. Perhaps I should stick to reading it, in my study. You may be right.

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Bingo.😉

Alright! Now I know how best to go about it... Yet I am telling you, I have not been unknown to study Tolkien's books rigorously.

Elbereth Vala Varda said:

Alright! Now I know how best to go about it... Yet I am telling you, I have not been unknown to study Tolkien's books rigorously.

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Well, that's OK, so long us you study them (Tolkien's books) AFTER you have read them umpteen times. 😁
But you said you have not read the Narnia Stories for some time (a long time?), so you must re-immerse yourself in Narnia a lot before you get to study it.
Thems the rules 😉.

Elbereth Vala Varda said:

Perhaps I should stick to reading it, in my study.

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Or you could study it, in your reading room.

For Lovecraft fans into audio books, and looking for more tales in the Mythos, here's a six-hour collection:

Interesting.
For writers, one of Ent's current books is:



Syme has an interesting little series of books targeting issues keeping writers from writing, helping them grasp what's REAL about writing as opposed to what many of the 'writers about writers' tell us is essential, and so forth..
She has 8 books in the series I think. I've selected 3 to see what she's all about and whether she just duplicates herself in the others.
This 1st one is interesting. I'm looking forward to the 2nd.

The last book in era 2 of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson was released yesterday and came in the mail today, so I'll be reading The Lost Metal all night.

Interesting. I read a lot through the night. Generally, if slumber doesn't come, I'll read for an hour, or two (or 7.... yep.) It seems to help, or it just exhausts me, but all the same, very fun!

Elbereth Vala Varda said:

Interesting. I read a lot through the night. Generally, if slumber doesn't come, I'll read for an hour, or two (or 7.... yep.) It seems to help, or it just exhausts me, but all the same, very fun!

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Yeah he's my favorite (living) author and is an amazing world builder.

The third of four books on Jazz that my dad must have bought in the early-to-mid 1960's, among the few books of my parents that I saved for our already overstuffed "library" when I had to clear my mother's large apartment twelve years ago. One is a biography of sorts of Duke Ellington, copyright of the German translation 1961, a collection of essays and articles. One is the German translation of a Danish (!!!) lexicon of Jazz that strays into the mid-1960's in some entries. And two are books by German "authorities" on Jazz, both copyrighted 1961.

It's fascinating to read about veterans born in the 1880's still being somewhat active, and people born in the late 1920's to mid-1930's being considered "hopeful young musicians" ... 😬

Currently reading The Two Towers (again) and, in preparation for The Lays of Beleriand, slowly taking in Dante's Divine Comedy, another epic poem. I am also dipping into Tim Peake's book, Hello, is this planet Earth?

Amon Rudh said:

Currently reading The Two Towers (again) and, in preparation for The Lays of Beleriand, slowly taking in Dante's Divine Comedy, another epic poem. I am also dipping into Tim Peake's book, Hello, is this planet Earth?

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I've never attempted a book that old, how does Dante's Divine Comedy read?

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I'm reading the Sillmarillion currently, courtesy of Erestor.