Summer Reading - Chesterton, Aristotle, and the Bible

Reading is ever so much fun when there's no schedule to follow - I can spend as long as I wish on one book and that is just fine. Most recently I have finished Chesterton's The Everlasting Man; a treatise on natural history and Christ's place and transforming thereof. You already know how much I love Chesterton's prose - it may well be the finest prose I have yet read in an original tongue. His rich imagery and ruthless logic coupled with his dry sarcastic wit (not to mention his Classical education) exalt him far above writers such as J.K. Rowling, Christopher Paolini, and even better writers such as Weis, Hickman, and Gamel, who are fine storytellers (except maybe for Paolini, for reading his work is like perusing a Warcraft game on paper) but not so fine writers. I read all the DragonLance books when I was younger and still enjoy most of what Weis & Hickman wrote themselves, but I can easily recognize that their writing as writing do not match up to the fantastics of Tolkien, Lewis, Heinlein, Herbert Verne, Wells, or Bradbury. They also are wonderful storytellers, especially Bradbury, but they are great writers as well; it is a pleasure to read their words in addition to admiring their story.

Good prose exalts the mind and benefits the soul. Reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is good for you in every sense of the word. Reading classical literature is good for the soul in addition to stimulating the mind and exposing it to high quality reading. Once you get into classical prose you will find works by authors such as those in the first list fun to read (Mom would call it chocolate for the brain but not good chocolate) but lacking the solidity and feel of good thick prose. When all is said and done, would you rather have DragonLance on your shelf or The Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter or Dune? I would of course prefer to read them all, for modern literature is easy. You can breeze right through it and read hundreds of pages in one sitting, whereas even The Hobbit is mildly dense though it is a children's book, and Chesterton and Lewis (especially their adult fiction) is thick and rich, preventing you from swallowing it whole.

The written word is capable of such beautiful, terrible power it is a shame to see us as a culture debasing it. Children do not read Tolkien - they read dumbed down version of Weis & Hickman, Harry Potter (whose volcabulary is roughly that of an eight year old), or Paolini. We need to read! We must read the great books of children's literature to prepare us for adult classics! It's terrible that adults do not read Plato, Aristotle, and Homer! It's terrible that teenagers go through adolescance without reading Austen, Tolkien, Lewis, or Bradbury! It's terrible that boys who watch Star Wars don't read Dune! We need to read!