Monday Recommends and Nails: Yes And No And HELL Yeah!

So Chirp Books offered me a deal on C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy, so I bit. Now we all know C. S. Lewis from his Narnia books (so, let’s write books about Jesus, but he’s a lion).

The first of the space trilogy is OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, in which a linguist is kidnapped by an evil scientist and a ne-er-do-well former schoolmate and taken to Mars, which, like most fiction of that era, has breathable atmosphere. I liked this book because it features three intelligent and happily co-existing alien races who are only humanoid-ISH. There was an almost Tolkienesque attention to landscape, but it was an ALIEN landscape, so it didn’t drive me nuts, like when Tolkien would tell me about the daisies they passed and shit like that.

ANYWAY, I liked the word-building although, upon looking back on the book, I see it was pretty much Pilgrim’s Progress in (then) modern dress. I mean, the hero’s name was Ransom, for God’s sake.

Then I started reading the second book in the trilogy, PERELANDRA, and I was just no. Just no. Ransom goes to a paradise planet, and everything is so sublime and pure it makes Aslan look like if the Wicked Witch of the West and Loki had a baby.

Now, my nails this week are a tribute to an online friend who used to blog as Mommy Wants Vodka, also known as Aunt Becky. She also founded the Band Back Together Project, a safe place for women — and men — to share their fears, defeats, traumas, and pain. It’s also a warehouse of resources on coping with addiction, illness, grief, and trauma.

AB doesn’t actively blog at this time, but she’s present on social media, and is endlessly warm, sympathetic, and supportive. She also has almost as foul a mouth as I do. So I love her.

AB, these are for you. As for the significance of any or all of them: if you know, you know.

My base color is dark blue, and stamping is done with off-white and deep red. The wolves are three shades of gray.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Someone only known from afar, but held very dear.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

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One thought on “Monday Recommends and Nails: Yes And No And HELL Yeah!

  1. acflory

    November 14, 2023 at 5:48pm

    I think I actually have all three on my bookshelf. I /think/ I read them, because back them books were expensive and I’ve always been a scrooge. But…I can’t remember a thing about any of them. I guess that says something. :/

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  2. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt

    November 13, 2023 at 6:46pm

    Never even tried these CSLewis books – I have a huge aversion to religious fantasy, as so much of it is, well, highly Protestant. However – lots of people love it.

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      Marian Allen

      November 14, 2023 at 8:37am

      I know you have very little time/energy to read while you’re writing, but FYI: Lewis was high Anglican, so he was only Protestant-ISH, and the Narnia books and Out of the Silent Planet work on their own, because the religion is pretty subtextual on the lines of “if you know, you know”.

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