"A Side Wind? What Kind of a Side Wind?"

You know that quote "You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me," attributed to C.S. Lewis? I want to know where that comes from, and if he really said it, because I see it so much that I begin to wonder... I've run across a number of famous quotes of his in Mere Christianity and The Four Loves, and a number of famous quotes of Chesterton's in The Everlasting Man, and I put it to the people who use those quotes to prove to me that they had read those quotes previously in those books, and not that they had merely nicked them off the internet because they thought they sounded nice.

Oh, you are the Inquisition tonight!
Adamantine

I've been rather quiet around here lately, but that's only because I've been out of town and out of my normal routine. Now I am home and kind of recovered, back into the normal way of things, and I've finally come face to face with the truth. There is a saying, "Too many books, not enough time," and I don't have to know who said that because, like Newton's law of gravitation, it doesn't belong to any one person, it's simply a fact of reality. At the beginning of the year I had, tentatively, put forward a proposed list for what I wanted to read this year. It grew, alarmingly, and then...died. This is what my original list, with the additions, looked like before its death:

The Art of Medieval Hunting - John Cummins
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
The Kirkbride Conversations - Harry Blamires
The Everlasting Man - G.K. Chesterton
The Golden Warrior - Hope Muntz
Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
The Discarded Image - C.S. Lewis
Moonblood - Anne Elisabeth Stengl
When Christ and His Saints Slept - Sharon Kay Penman
The Four Loves - C.S. Lewis
The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain
The Conquering Family - Thomas B. Costain
The Improvement of the Mind - Isaac Watts
Sword Song - Rosemary Sutcliff
The Crystal Cave - Mary Stewart
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun - J.R.R. Tolkien
Purgatorio - Dante
The Song of Roland - Unknown
The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis
Starflower - Anne Elisabeth Stengl
God, the Center of Value - C. David Grant
Of the Imitation of Christ - Thomas a Kempis
Human Nature in Its Fourfold State - Thomas Boston
The Witch's Brat - Rosemary Sutcliff
Blood Feud - Rosemary Sutcliff
Jesus Among Other Gods - Ravi Zacharias
Gleanings From Paul - A.W. Pink

I have read several of these. The Kirkbride Conversations, The Everlasting Man, Mere Christianity, The Four Loves, and Sutcliff's The Witch's Brat are all completed. But then I went and read The Ballad of the White Horse, by Chesterton (in case you couldn't tell), and a Lord Peter mystery called Clouds of Witness, and the two follow-up books to Howl's Moving Castle: Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways. These were not exactly on my list. There is nothing like making a list to get other things done. I'm not really strict about my lists: they are structures for me, if I need structures. And this list in particular seems to have imploded under its own weight and begins anew to look more like this:

The Art of Medieval Hunting - John Cummins
The Golden Warrior - Hope Muntz
The Discarded Image - C.S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis
Moonblood - Anne Elisabeth Stengl
The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain
The Improvement of the Mind - Isaac Watts
Of the Imitation of Christ - Thomas a Kempis
The Song of Roland - Some French Dude
Purgatorio - Dante
Jesus Among Other Gods - Ravi Zacharias
Blood Feud - Rosemary Sutcliff
Bonnie Dundee - Rosemary Sutcliff
The Napoleon of Notting Hill - G.K. Chesterton
Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
Centuries - Thomas Traherne

That is still somewhat lengthy for my reading pace. Some books, like Of the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis and Centuries by Thomas Traherne, will take a long time to finish, as they need to be read only a little bit at a time. I am proud to say that I am nearly finished at last with The Art of Medieval Hunting. I really am enjoying it, but it is long and I am a slow reader. I had it the other day when I was with a friend and she asked me what I was reading. Feeling put on the spot, I hesitantly told her, fully aware of how bizarre it sounds for me to be reading a large book on the subject of hawks and hounds. She began with, "It sounds..." "Overwhelming?" I supplied in an attempt to be both helpful to her and gentle on myself. "Boring," she replied frankly. I was taken somewhat aback by this, but I was also thoroughly humoured. I am used to people gentling me with their pitying disinterest in my bizarre, eclectic taste in literature. I know they mean well, but the patronizing begins to gall one after a while. So my friend's bluntness, completely taking me by surprise (she is such a sweet girl, always loath to give any offence), warmed the cockles of my heart.

I have a more manageable list at present. I don't know how long that will last. I do try to keep things mixed - you can see the list is eclectic in the extreme. I have been reading a lot of Chesterton lately, but then Chesterton was missing for most of my life and I am trying to catch up. Thanks, Anna. Also, between Bonnie Dundee, Kidnapped, and my debates about whether or not my six-year-old niece would enjoy Flame-Coloured Taffeta, there appears to be a sort of conspiracy among the Jacobites to get me to read about them. I think they know I'm Parliamentarian.

"The Jacobites are in."