The Cosmic Trilogy of C S Lewis

   Yesterday I bought three books. I know. I'm trying to reduce my library. But in a charity shop these three volumes of the C S Lewis Cosmic Trilogy were on sale for £1 per volume. They are in very good condition, published by Bodley Head, Hardcover, 1976, and dustcovers clean and unclipped. I first read the Cosmic Trilogy in the 1970's in the first paperbacks, now long gone as brown, cracked and done. I reckoned I could find three inches of shelf space, and will read them again over the summer.

C S Lewis is an acquired taste, and also a taste that can be lost. I can't read some of his stuff now. Maybe because some of his writing is now seriously dated, and much of it has been gathered into massive volumes of letters, essays and miscellania that are really for CSL enthusiasts rather than interested readers. But the good stuff is still very good. The Chronicles of Narnia remain an alternative world for all ages; Surprised by Joy is an enduring classic of religious discovery; Reflections on the Psalms say as much about Lewis as the Psalms; The Four Loves is a mixture of philosophy, pscychology, lierary criticism, Christian reflection and a sometimes blinkered C S Lewis; Mere Christianity is unlikely to perauade postmodern minds instinctively sceptical of clever apologetics; Till We Have Faces is, for me at least, a beautiful story of human love, identity and divine longing; and so on. But I have and will hold on to each of these books, flawed as they are.