Coicoy

 And so we come to the end. The book begins unlike any other book in the series: with an Ape and a Donkey. The Donkey's name is Puzzle, and the Ape's name is Shift. They are quite appropriately named, for Puzzle is a puzzled little donkey who certainly believes he is not clever, and Shift is quite a shifty and mean-spirited Ape who changes what is true into a falsehood, and essentially bullies his donkey slave (with whom he pretends to friends) into becoming a makeshift false Aslan .  Shift manipulates the situation to gain control and power over Narnia, and as it turns out he at some point is discovered to be in cahoots with the Calormenes. Together, they fell Narnian trees and mistreat the Talking Animals, who are misled to believe that this false Aslan is the real one and that he is angry with them and that he has changed the rules. In fact, being in league with the Calormenes, Shift gets the Narnians to believe that his real name is Tashlan , and that Tash and Aslan are t...

The Silver Chair has always been a notable book to me, for a few reasons. For one, it is one of the darkest tonally in the whole series and it was the one I found somewhat scary as a growing child. For another, it was one of the books adapted by the BBC for their series of televised productions, which I remember watching with my best friend Chris O. And then there's my mother, whom I must mention again. I am fairly certain that my introduction to the book came after my mom called me Puddleglum , or said that I was talking like him, or something along those lines. She said it with a smirk and a wink, and it stuck with me. So, when I first read the book, I was a bit amused and slightly bemused. I mean, I was generally a positive and optimistic child, at least I thought so, and Puddlglum's repeatedly referred to by Eustace and Jill as a wet blanket, and he's constantly expecting the worst outcome. He's an aptly named character. And with his musings come a fair amount of w...

And so we come to the classic. If there's any one book that most people have read from the series, it's this one: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe . [By the way, there seems to be no Oxford comma in this title, which does make sense to me in this case.] As a title, it's a classic too, and it is the most distinguishable title as a Narnia book in the series. After all, when I see or hear the word closet  (or walk-in-closet ), I think of clothes, but when I hear the word wardrobe , I think of hide-and-seek and coats and trees and snow and Mr. Tumnus and Turkish Delight ! To a certain extent, I'm almost overly familiar with this book when I re-read it, but I'd like to share some reflections and general observations about it, especially with where my mind has been in reading it this time. First of all, I think I've come to the conclusion that it's a coin-flip whether or not it is best to read this one or The Magician's Nephew first if you are an...

The first time I can remember hearing of  The Chronicles of Narnia  by C.S. Lewis was sometime in my childhood, and I remember two specific details about my introduction to the series of books. For the first detail, I remember being in the backyard of Cordelia's house. Cordelia was our friend and neighbor-down-the-street, and her mother often used to buy us McDonald's Happy Meals whenever we hung out, if I recall correctly. Although we were young, Cordelia had learned some of the Greek alphabet, and that was the first time I heard the letters  Alpha ,  Beta , and  Gamma  as being associated with anything other than the Alpha Beta grocery store that existed in our neighborhood in those days. What we were doing, besides talking and using our imaginations - as children do - I do not remember. But I believe I remember noticing the cover to  Voyage of the Dawn Treader  and being captivated by the cover - it looked like some sort of dragon ship. I pro...