I liked Chronicles of Narnia and I am an adult. Is it something wrong?

Guanazee said:
I love them, too. I first read them as an adult, but I am not Christian. The allegory went completely over my head until I researched the author. For me, it's just fantasy.
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As a series , it hold up pretty well. :cool:
 
When I was a kid it was just Noddy then The Famous Five before I reached the great love of my childhood BIGGLES!
I had a copy of the original Pinocchio, not the Disney version and in places it is very, very dark, Pinocchio is actually not a very nice character to start with, he actually kills the cricket/conscience character, he only redeems himself by looking after his ageing creator/father Geppetto.
P.S. Another great childhood love would have been Dan Dare but sadly I never had the Eagle comic!
P.P.S. Biggles, great British square jawed hero plus, aeroplanes, aeroplanes and yet more aeroplanes, what more could a boy possible want!
P.P.P.S. I like aeroplanes.
 
BigBadBob141 said:
When I was a kid it was just Noddy then The Famous Five before I reached the great love of my childhood BIGGLES!
I had a copy of the original Pinocchio, not the Disney version and in places it is very, very dark, Pinocchio is actually not a very nice character to start with, he actually kills the cricket/conscience character, he only redeems himself by looking after his ageing creator/father Geppetto.
P.S. Another great childhood love would have been Dan Dare but sadly I never had the Eagle comic!
P.P.S. Biggles, great British square jawed hero plus, aeroplanes, aeroplanes and yet more aeroplanes, what more could a boy possible want!
P.P.P.S. I like aeroplanes.
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The first time I ever heard the name Biggles was in the Monty Python skit with Graham Chapman. The second time was the Biggles Adventure in Time ( which I rather liked ) . It's unknown in the US as far as I know , this series never seen print here.
 
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BAYLOR said:
The first time I ever heard the name Biggles was in the Monty Python skit with Graham Chapman. The second time was the Biggles Adventure in Time ( which I rather liked ) . It's unknown are in the US As far as I know , this series never saw print her.
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great movie. by the way about mein kampf, i think that every book as something to learn from... or at least a good laugh
 
Yay, Biggles! Planes and adventures! I loved it. Ever since I have a weak spot for protagonists who fly areoplanes. Gavin Lyall wrote a few.
BAYLOR said:
It's unknown in the US as far as I know , this series never seen print here.
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Strange, perhaps too British? It was translated and printed in Dutch.
 
Elckerlyc said:
Yay, Biggles! Planes and adventures! I loved it. Ever since I have a weak spot for protagonists who fly areoplanes. Gavin Lyall wrote a few.

Strange, perhaps too British? It was translated and printed in Dutch.
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I think it would it done well here in the US. :unsure:
 
BAYLOR said:
I think it would it done well here in the US. :unsure:
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I think the social subtleties would have baffled the average US child, not to mention the language barrier.

“What ho Algy! lets give the blighter one.” shouted Biggles, hefting his croquet mallet as he advanced on the shifty working class individual with a Lancashire accent, a flat cap and a squint, who was making a mess of the pitch with his hobnails. Algy hurriedly scoffed his cucumber sandwich and looked around for his 12 bore. Ginger continued to sip his Earl Grey, making sure not to crease his flannels. Dickpa picked up a half brick as he puffed on his pipe. Probably a foreigner, he thought to himself.
 
hitmouse said:
I think the social subtleties would have baffled the average US child, not to mention the language barrier.

“What ho Algy! lets give the blighter one.” shouted Biggles, hefting his croquet mallet as he advanced on the shifty working class individual with a Lancashire accent, a flat cap and a squint, who was making a mess of the pitch with his hobnails. Algy hurriedly scoffed his cucumber sandwich and looked around for his 12 bore. Ginger continued to sip his Earl Grey, making sure not to crease his flannels. Dickpa picked up a half brick as he puffed on his pipe. Probably a foreigner, he thought to himself.
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That would baffled more than a few US adults too. :(
 
JunkMonkey said:
I'm sure there are lots of adults who like Wind in the Willows. But did any of them never read it as a kid and only FIRST read it as an adult?
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actually i saw it on tv and absolutely loved the show
 
I'd like to reread some of the ones I neglected when I was young, eg "The Silver Chair" (which I remember as being quite dark, and wet) and "The Horse and his Boy". Also "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader".
I obsessively re-read "The Last Battle" when I was nine ten or something, then when as a teenager I read it again I was repelled and felt like I'd been manipulated. Lewis once wrote something along the lines of "one shouldn't preach to them, talk down to them or tell them what to think" when writing for children. I agree
 
It must be very different coming to them as an adult. Perhaps as adults we are more suspicious of the author.
I think the Narnia
books had a great influence on me as a child in a way that eg the Famous Five, or um "Watership Down", didn't.
 
JunkMonkey said:
I'm sure there are lots of adults who like Wind in the Willows. But did any of them never read it as a kid and only FIRST read it as an adult?
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Lovecraft is the author I wonder about — did any Lovecraft fan first read him at 30 or later?
 
Can't see how there would be anything wrong with liking a book no matter how old/young/square/round you happen to be -not unless it's an instruction manual for poisoning other humans. Just gonna add the Mr.Men series by Roger Hargreaves (and the later stuff by his son), always a nice rounded story with a happy ending and usually a laugh. The thread reminds me of the best ever line of abuse I heard, it was shouted angrily across a car park: 'see him there, he went to Lethal Weapon 4 and he didn't even like it' -pure unintentional comedy;)
 
Extollager said:
Lovecraft is the author I wonder about — did any Lovecraft fan first read him at 30 or later?
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And has Obediah Marsh ever been seen in the same room as Mr Toad? And then there's the Pan incident and... hmm. The Whippoorwills in the Willows, perhaps?

I did once start a cross-over story called "Tinker, Tailor, Badger, Mole", where Mole was sent undercover to the Animals' Republic of Farmia.
 
Not at all. A good story is a good story--and there's plenty of those to be had over in the "younger readers" section of the library.

Welcome!
 
Occasionally the Narnian books will be casually referred to as "allegories." I don't know if anyone reading this posting calls them "allegories." If we take the historically normative use of "allegory," I don't think the Narnian books qualify. The Pilgrim's Progress is a good book and a good example of an allegory that ought to be familiar to everyone. In it a character named Christian runs into trouble in a town called Vanity Fair, and during his journey he meets characters with names such as Watchful, Hypocrisy, Worldly Wiseman, Giant Despair, & so on. Persons, things, places are emblems of spiritual states. Conversely, certain spiritual states are like these emblems.

In the Narnian books, you have children such as Peter, Edmund, Jill, &c. They're not allegories but kids. You have Aslan, who is not an allegory of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity; He is, as readers may eventually realize,* the Second Person as He might be supposed to be incarnated in a world in which animals possess reason, can speak, make moral choices, etc. The White Witch isn't an allegory of evil, she's an evil person. Cair Paravel is a castle, not an allegory of spiritual strength or whatever. Sometimes when people object to the "allegory" of the Narnian books, what they probably are really objecting to is the Christian belief reflected in the books. For many non-Christian readers this isn't a problem, just as for many Christians the Taoism in Ursula Le Guin's first Earthsea books is not a problem.

*Lewis doesn't make it hard for the reader to discern this, but nor does he force the matter on the reader. He wants the stories to be enjoyed by the reader whether the reader unpacks these significances or not, to whatever degree is appropriate. I don't think he wanted busybodies to point out these matters to readers, sort of taking charge of the readers and the books.
 
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