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Summary: Excellent book for the Lewis admirer
Review: The Lewis admirer will greatly appreciate this book and its depiction of the early life of this Christian genius. He describes his slow transformation from stanch athiest to devout Christian in the complicated simplicity that only Lewis can achieve. However, be weary of this book if you have never previously read Lewis. The development of the story is rather slow and lethargic and the non-Lewis fan may find it difficult to get through the early chapters. Yet, for the Lewis admirer the lax early chapters are well worth the culminating transformation in the late portion.
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Summary: A bushel of insight and appropriate subjectivity.
Review: The mark of a good teacher is the degree to which his students learn even when, or especially when, he goes off on a tangent. By that measure, Lewis ranked among the best, and the Medieval cornocopia of miscellaneous ideas that is this book is an education. You learn philosophy, English and Irish topography, education, jokes, a theory of language study, a theory of C.S.Lewis, and most of all, everything you did or did not want to know about literature. Actually, some of what he says on that subject assumes more knowledge than most of us are likely to possess.Yes, there is also a story here also, about how Lewis searched for Joy and found Jesus instead. (The title is a pun, by the way, worth five stars all by itself.) And the interuptions and detours tend to enhance the reader's appetite for the story, rather than detract from it. I don't agree with the reader below, or with the criticism in A.N.Wilson's biography which it parallels. Reason clearly played a central role in his conversion. In this book, however, he describes the effect of the reasoning on him, rather than recounting the particular arguments in detail as he has done in other books. He said the book was going to be subjective, even apologized for the fact in the preface! To speak subjectively is not to belittle the objective facts which act on the subject; to make that equation shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Lewis' thought and of thought in general. For example, Lewis describes here how the "most hard-boiled atheist I ever met" came into his room one day and admitted that the evidence for the Gospels was "surprisingly good." Lewis describes his shock, and the effect this idea had on him. But if you want a fuller version of Lewis' reasoning on that subject, written just a little bit later than this book, see his brilliant and devastating little essay, Elephants and Fernseed -- which to my mind drove a stake through the heart of all Higher Criticism, including that written decades after his death, such as Wilson's silly biography of Jesus. Lewis also speaks of the effect the arguments of his Christian friends and the books he read had in converting him to Christianity, but again don't expect him to give you those arguments here. My one criticism is Lewis ought not to have subjected his father to his satirical and rather cutting brand of humor as he does in a few passages. Author, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture
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Summary: A MUST MUST MUST for and fan of Lewis!!!
Review: This book is essential for anyone curious about the life of Lewis. Or anyone who his a fan of his thought. This book is a bout the life and conversion of Lewis, told as an autobiography, as opposed to an allegory as in "Pilgrim's Regress." It culminates with Lewis's conversion to Anglican Christianity: "You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling . . . the steady, unrelenting approach of Him who I so earnestly desired not to meet. . . I [finally] gave in and admitted that God was God, and I knelt a prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not see then what is now the most shining and obvious thing: the Divine humility will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?" This book, however is not religious mumbo-jumbo, and is not just strictly a religious text, but it encompasses other aspects of Lewis's life: his experience as a son, a brother, a student, an intellectual freebooter, etc. On a human level, this book has touched and resonated with me more than any other book I have read, outside of Scripture. I have experienced many of the same things Lewis had experienced. In a slightly different way, and in a different order, but there was enough of the essence of the events to harmonize with me. I almost felt that I was Lewis in a way. Even if you are a non-Christian, non-believer, or a non-interested person, I recommend this book as part of one humans experience in life, as one slice of humanity!
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Summary: A lovely and perennially absorbing book
Review: This is a great book by a great writer, telling both of CS Lewis's life, including his education and his experiences as a front-line soldier in World War I, and his discovery of "Joy" and the sense of the scared, and his final conversion from Athiesm to Christiantiy. Full of wisdom, humor and fascinating historical description. His descriptions of his father, mother and brother, including his reaction to his mother's early death, are poignant and moving. He tells, also, of what it was really like to be a yong officer in the trenches of World War I, in which he was seriously wounded. In another key, how to really learn a difficult foreign language. This is a book to treasure and to read again and again.
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Summary: It was a FREE CHOICE to loosen the reins...
Review: This is a most remarkable account of one's conversion to belief. It is the eloquent yet highly readable language that Lewis uses which enables the reader to relate to his way of thinking. Lewis ultimately realizes that 'before God closed in on me, I was offered...a moment of wholly free choice...I could open the door or keep it shut...' This reveals the truth that God loves us to the extent that we are alloted a FREE CHOICE regarding whether we want to accept Him. However, it seems silly NOT to accept him! For if we abandon God, we act just as Lewis did..."darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape..." But who in their right mind would really want to escape Joy? This autobiography will fascinate the person who is perhaps searching for God or is unsure of God's existence. It will present a rather different perspective of conversion as it is taken from an intellectual standpoint. Finally, this book will reaffirm the authority of the One who simply declared 'I am that I am.'
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Summary: An autobiography of C.S. Lewis' life
Review: This is an autobiography of C.S. Lewis' life. You see what shaped him and the struggles he faced in his acceptance of Christianity. From this book you will better understand what shaped him and thus better understand his other works.
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Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: This is C. S. Lewis's spiritual autobiography and it is a masterpiece. Lewis was raised in a somewhat nominal Christianity, which he threw off as a school-boy. But as Lewis says, "A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There were traps everywhere - 'Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,' as Herbert says, 'fine nets and strategems.' God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous." And this book is Lewis's chronicle of God's strategems and nets and the surprises which eventually converted Lewis back to Christianity. Central to this process was Lewis's experience of joy, which he defines as "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." As a boy and as a man, Lewis was stabbed by this desire, yet never able to satisfy it. By a process of elimination, he came to realize that (as he says in another book) "if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." The desire led him to the Objective Other - the Absolute - Spirit. At first, Lewis viewed this Other as an impersonal and objective absolute. But, God strategically boxed him into a corner (Lewis uses the analogy of check-mate in a game of chess) where he was forced to acknowledge that this Other was God Himself, and beyond that, God enfleshed in Jesus Christ. Woven into the story are the events of Lewis's childhood, education, and intellectual development. Quite a lot of the discussion centers around his reading, from Beatrix Potter as a child, to Keats, Herbert, MacDonald, and Chesterton as a young adult. This is a fascinating book and one cannot quite hope to fully appreciate Lewis without reading it. I highly recommend it!
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Summary: A painfully honest account of one man's conversion
Review: This is not a novel and not really an autobiography, but rather a first-hand account of one man's journey from atheism to a belief in God (Christianity came much later and is not covered in this book--for that read his many religious works). I discovered this little gem while living and working as a graduate student in Scotland, at a time when I was neck-deep in the pit of atheism and feeling almost totally lost. I don't know why I was moved to take it off the shelf and buy it, but it was to be only the first of Lewis's books that I read. It's still my favorite because its theme is so close to me. What makes Lewis's book so remarkable is its unashamed honesty and willingness to shed all masks in the face of reality, no matter how unpleasant or frightening that reality may seem. Lewis did not want to find God, and we feel with him that burning desire to run away once God has been discovered. The wonderful lightness and love that characterize many of Lewis's later works are not found here. Instead we see his defenses against God shattered one by one as he follows an intellectual path to belief. He tries his best to argue his way out of it, fighting every step of the way and using all the trivial excuses that human beings do, but we feel God's presence bearing down on him step by step like a great weight until he realizes that there is no escape. Lewis sees that it IS a burden at first if one has come to it honestly, because with it comes the realization that we are required to abandon ourselves and submit to God's will in order to find eternal peace. This is not an easy road for a human being to follow--indeed, it is the most difficult thing in the world for us to do, and Lewis knew that very well. We feel with him the pain and weight that came when he realized that there IS a God: the account of his final days as an atheist is absolutely excruciating for a reader who has had the same experience. One must actively and willingly choose to become what one is not by his very nature--what could be more difficult, particularly in this secular world? Lewis's account of his spiritual journey shows that God can be discovered in the most unlikely places and in the most unlikely ways, no matter how hard we try to avoid Him. When we think we have trumped God, we find that He has in fact trumped us, always remaining well ahead of us on the path. Lewis's account often reads like a great chess match between one man and God, but it remains familiar because it is a match that we play again and again. As always, Lewis's honesty is disarming, his insight staggering, and his humor refreshing. I cannot recommend this book enough, but if you are looking for a biography of Lewis's life, this will not provide it. For that I recommend George Sayer's "Jack," but the best way to find out who Lewis was is to read his books.
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Summary: "It brings God nearer, or near in a new way."
Review: This is the firsthand account of how C.S. Lewis passed from Atheism through to Theism, and onward to Christianity. Lewis says in the Preface that he knew of no autobiography in which the parts devoted to the earlier years were not by far the most interesting. As such, the entire first half of his own consists of a detailed recollection of childhood and adolescence. The second half is devoted to tracing his adult intellectual interests and particularly to recounting the thought processes which led him in his thirtieth year to a profound conversion experience. Lewis said "How far the story matters to anyone but myself depends on the degree to which others have experienced what I call 'joy'." By "joy" he was referring to his concept of "sehnsucht" a German word that came closest to the sense of yearning or longing that Lewis felt as early on as six years old. Sehnsucht is an experience difficult to define... it is a longing for an object which is never fully given, coupled with a sense of alienation or displacement from what is desired. Perhaps another way of describing it could be a ceaseless yearning which always points beyond itself. It is this elusive nature of sehnsucht that Lewis had in mind when he (in typical brevity) coined the phrase "our best havings are wantings." At any rate, sehnsucht or "joy" was such a crucial element in the development of Lewis that we find it here in the title of his life story, and the "surprise" for him was in the gradual realization that joy (as such) was not foreign, contrary to, unaddressed by or otherwise OPPOSED to theism. In fact, Lewis began to see that the most religious writers (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil, Spenser, Milton, Sir Thomas Browne, Herbert, Donne, Chesterton, MacDonald) were those in whom he found the most kinship in this respect, while those who did not "suffer from religion" (Shaw, Gibbon, Voltaire, Wells, John Stuart Mill) seemed as nourishing as old dishwater. He concluded that "A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading." Even though the book is never preachy, I believe that the above conclusion applies to any atheist that reads Surprised By Joy through to the end. As with other writings by Lewis, Christianity emerges as something that actually makes a lot of sense. It's not until the last page that Lewis takes this final step, and his theism becomes "not a god, but God." My title for this review is taken from that last page, where Lewis describes what happens when one accepts the Incarnation.
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Summary: An Honest Conversion Story
Review: This short book takes us from Lewis' early atheism to his later belief in God and ultimately, we know, to his belief in Christianity. Like all of his works, this book is clear and engaging to read, and often thought-provoking. Unfortunately, I cannot give it my highest recommendation. Though I enjoy most of Lewis' works, this one fell a bit short for me. I had trouble believing Lewis was ever really an atheist, or even an agnostic. Perhaps that is partly by design, but I rather think that Lewis was trying to make his conversion seem a greater alteration than it was. Compared to the "great" conversions of St. Paul or St. Augustine, this one pales in comparison. Also, this book is rather unfairly included with religious works, and while religion is one of its topics--and its organizing principle--Lewis is interested in other ideas, including education and child rearing. So much has changed in these 2 areas over the last 50 years or so, that I found much of those sections in the book uninteresting. Still, for Lewis fans, this is a book you should read. However, if you are looking for an introduction to Lewis' Christian thought, you'd be better of with Mere Christianity.
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