Chronicles of Narnia book frustration

[ladykorana]

Warning: Slight mention of my personal dissatisfaction with organized religion is contained in this post. While it's not my intention to offend anyone, those that are particularly zealous Christians ought to skip this.

Comments

[tarotgal]

I'm proud of you for giving the books a read :-) I think my love for the series is MOSTLY because I was a child when I first read the books (3rd grade? Definitely during/by 4th grade). I immediately identified with Lucy (I can't lie either, LOL) and was sucked into the world which felt- to me- incredibly vivid and real. I loved the concept of being able to get into another world and I liked to think of the time-passage thing as a very interesting concept, rather like daydreams/my imagination. I could imagine all sorts of stuff but when I needed to stop, I was still me, sitting in my room, etc

[ladykorana]

I often wonder how I might have turned out, had I read both Narnia and LOTR when I was much younger. I read all the time as a child, but even then I tended to run in obsessive streaks, like my 'Sweet Valley High' period, my 'Clan of the Cave Bear' period, and my huge run of pre-white-people Native American novels, and it was easy for stuff to slip through the cracks that wasn't in my fandom of choice at the moment. Of course, I deliberately avoided reading LOTR after being freaked out by the spiders and orcs, and put off by Gollum in the cartoon 'The Hobbit', which amuses me to no end now. *G* But yeah, much of the Christian allegory probably goes right over the heads of young children unless their parents point it out deliberately. I regret not reading Narnia when I was younger, but I wouldn't readily trade away my experience of being completely and utterly blown away by FOTR in the theater, swept away by the story and not having a clue what to expect. I'm sad that I'll never have a mental image of 'book Legolas' untouched by

[tarotgal]

I like reading the books in publication order, not chronological order, because my favorites are LWW, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair. I love the quests in those and Eustace is such a fascinating character to me (so long as I adopt that denial attitude where Christianity is concerned and, again, look at it with the religious tones as a normal person not wanting to believe in fantasy but being forced to admit it's real). I know you haven't read those two yet, but I adore then because the lands seem SO detailed and rich to me, and the adventures are interesting/important. I've definitely got a thing for quests. And I was quite attracted to lovely Caspian in VotDT (And Peter, for what it's worth) ;-) And Reep is one of my favorite characters as well. Gotta love noble, loyal warrior-types. I love Shasta and Aravis, too, though

[ladykorana]

I probably should have read them in publication order too, since creators often have no idea how much the impact is lessened/changed by partaking of the adventures in a different order (read: George Lucas. I would *Never* use The Phantom Menace as the introduction into the SW universe!). I did make it a point to read 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe' first though