I finished my second book of the year a few days ago, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. The rest of my selections should be easy after getting this one out of the way. This being my first C.S. Lewis read, I wonder if they will all be so laborious to read. Mere Christianity is the next one I will attempt by him, but it won’t be for a couple months to be sure.
For those of you behind the times (such as myself), this book was first published in book form in 1942. It is made up of letters written to a lower level devil named Wormwood, by his ‘affectionate’ uncle Screwtape. The intent of the letters are to advise Wormwood on how he should best go about condemning the soul of the earthly man he is assigned to. Throughout the letters, Lewis paints pictures of how the devil and his minions might go about the process of breaking us away from a relationship with what they call, The Enemy.
I recommend you give this book a whirl if you haven’t already. It’s wordy and not something you’ll breeze through in a few days, but it’s well worth it. For a book to be as timeless as this one is just goes to prove just how spot on he was in his observations.
As a side note, I was browsing through the wikipedia write-up on this book and I learned something new; Cartoonist Bill Watterson named the fictional first-grade teacher in his Calvin and Hobbes after the devil Wormwood.
[For those readers that live near me, this book is available to borrow in the Mud Puppy Library]
Filed under: Books, C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters
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