Philip Pullman on the Art of Storytelling

The Quiet Pleasure of Re-Reading

I find that, proportionally, I’m re-reading more books this year than ever before in my life.

I wonder why? Is it a first sign of getting (a little) older? The old, after all, rather re-live an old memory than conquer new territory. Or am I discovering in greater measure that revisiting old places can also be fun? That the mind ought to be refreshed as well as renewed? That there is pleasure in walking where you have walked before, because then you notice many things by the wayside which you had not noticed before?

Or is it simply the natural course of a reading life? That I begin to discover more and more one of the prime joys of making reading a lifelong habit? I mean the pleasant fact that one can read the same book at fifteen, at thirty, at forty-five, at sixty, and at seventy-five, and each time the vantage point is different because life has moved on. One identifies with different aspects in the book and sees characters from a different angle.

Whatever the reason, I find re-reading a more relaxing pleasure than new reading. A stroll rather than a run. The heart isn’t hammering quite as wildly, but one has more time to ponder.

The Crack Beneath the Worlds – Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3 – HEIMSKRING

Naomi hated always having to look up at people, and in the case of this man she had to crane her head back even farther than usual. His colossal frame was clothed in brown leather, layered like a suit of armor and adorned with two pieces of chain mail on his upper arms. The plaits of his blond hair mingled with the plaits of his beard, making it hard to see whether a particular plait grew out of his face or the top of his head. Naomi was frightened to look at him for too long.

“Dis struger, egnildeme!” (“Greetings, strangers!”) the man said and lifted his right hand in greeting. “Fard ki nehrafer ref ri dis?” (“May I know who you are?”)

Jerick cleared his throat and also lifted his right hand, but then moved it to scratch the back of his head. “Uh … you probably can’t understand us, just like we can’t understand a word of your gibberish, but maybe you could, I don’t know, communicate to us somehow who you are and where the heck we are?”

The man looked at them calmly, his blue eyes exuding dignity, despite the fact that his bearded face lacked any sort of comprehension. “Un, nef sad rier emana raf, nada si red rees ganal.” (“Well, if that was your name, then it’s very long.”)

“Well, as I said, we don’t seem to understand each other.” Jerick laughed uncomfortably.

“Rif nenisha nus tichin u nehesterfe.” (“We don’t seem to understand each other.”)

“Yeah, right, whatever.”

Before Jerick could think of what else to say, Naomi had the sensible idea of pointing to herself and saying “Naomi” several times.

“Ah! Nar-omi.”

“Yes, yes, I’m Naomi.”

“And I’m Jerick.”

“Jar-rick. Jar-rick. Ah!” The man pointed to himself. “O-no-gog. O-no-gog.”

“Onogog,” the children said.

“Aye, ki ni Onogog.” (“Yes, I am Onogog.”) He nodded again. Then he lifted his long, muscular arms and pointed all around him, saying repeatedly, “Heimskring. Heimskring.”

“Heimskring?” Naomi and Jerick glanced at each other.

“Maybe that’s the name of this ocean or country here,” Jerick said.

“Or this world,” Naomi suggested.

Jerick first sneered, then grunted. “I think you’ve been reading too many fantasy novels, Nomers.”

“Well, where else can we be? We don’t have any people like him at home. At least not anymore.”

Naomi felt as though she had stepped into a dream or a movie—or yes, into one of her fantasy novels she liked so much. Was this really happening? Had they drifted into a different world? Had it been a magic cloud that had wrapped them up like a blanket and carried them to an unknown place? Or had they landed in another time, like they did in stories with time machines?

She would have to wait to find out.

They proceeded to climb down the mast with Onogog, leaving the dragon balloon tied on top. Down on deck they met the sailors, who still threw fearful glances at the dragon hovering above them. They were twelve in all, including Onogog, but none of them was as imposing as he. Their hair and beards were not as long, their foreheads not as square, their shoulders not as broad, and their statures not as giant-like. Like Onogog, however, they were all blond and wore brown leather outfits.

Naomi scooted close to Jerick. She had never stood amongst a whole group of warriors, all equipped with real weapons. By the looks of them, they’d all killed people at one time or another. She felt like she’d much rather be at home reading about other worlds or times than actually being there.

Naomi’s fears turned out to be groundless. The sailors gave them as warm a welcome as possible on such a rustic ship, serving the hungry children plenty of cold meat, bread, and fruit, as well as some beer. It was the first time Naomi had beer, and it tasted very bitter. She had a hard time not spitting it back out. Although it seemed the right sort of drink in this setting.

During the meal, Onogog took one of the wooden plates and turned it upside down. With a few sticks and a piece of leather, he built a little model of a ship and put it on the plate. He gestured to the children that the ship was the one they were sailing on right now, and, pointing to the plate, he said, “Heimskring.” After that he slowly moved the ship toward the edge of the plate, even imitating the wind by bending down and blowing into the leathery sail. “Aye?”

“I think he’s trying to tell us about the purpose of their voyage,” Naomi said.

“Yeah, seems like they’ve got the fantastic notion that they could travel to the end of the world. As if the world were flat. Seem to be a little behind the times, these guys. Stuck in the Middle Ages or something.”

“A lot of people in the Middle Ages didn’t think that the earth was flat. You read the wrong kind of books, Jerick. You should read some older ones for a change. The other day Dad read to me a—”

“Okay, okay, know-it-all, I’m a balloon specialist, that’s all. I don’t have time to read all that old stuff.”

Onogog raised his thick eyebrows. He did not have to understand English to perceive their irritated tone of voice.

Naomi saw his face and smiled at him. “It’s all right, Onogog. We just still aren’t sure where we are and if your world might really be flat.”

“What?” said Jerick. “You think that the earth here actually might be flat?”

“Well, you never know.” Naomi forced herself to keep smiling and glanced at Onogog. “We might be in another world, and other worlds might be different from ours.”

“Yeah, and are being carried on the back of some giant ant or something.” He grunted again. “I guess we’ll see. At least it’s pretty obvious that that’s what they think. I mean the part about the world being flat, not the ant. Which isn’t very comforting. Either we’re headed toward the brim of the world and might fall off any minute or we’re traveling with a bunch of blockheads.”

○ ○ ○

After they had been on the ship for two hours, Naomi leaned over the starboard railing to take in the scenery. The railing was very low, even for her, and she wondered how the tall men managed not to trip over it by accident and fall into the sea. Naomi peered down at the moving water. It looked alive, as if it were a creature of its own: the waves, the gushing power with which it hit the ship, the white foam dancing over the dark azure.

She was glad to be on the ship and no longer in the balloon where she would still have to be afraid of landing in the ocean and drowning. She always had been especially afraid that she might die of drowning. Sometimes at night, when she could not fall asleep, she had horrible pictures in her head of being on a sinking ship and not getting on a lifeboat. She imagined herself struggling in the water, panic-stricken, being pulled under, her lungs bursting—

She shook her head as if to wake up. Stupid girl, to think of that now! Being on a ship was the worst possible time to remember her waking nightmares. So she looked down on the water and tried to simply appreciate its beauty. How quickly the ship was moving. Much more quickly, it seemed, than when they had first arrived. The water also looked much clearer. Naomi almost thought she could see the bottom of the ocean. But that must be an optical illusion, she figured. And what was that? A dolphin?

Naomi leaned farther over the railing. In the water, a slender creature swam parallel to the ship. It grew larger and larger, and suddenly it surged out of the water, and for an infinitesimal moment Naomi thought she saw a mermaid, though much more beautiful and terrifying than any she had ever seen in a picture.

The creature shot directly at her. A strong hand gripped her left upper arm and tore her over the railing, pulled her down headfirst into the water. The sounds of the wind and the voices of the sailors abruptly died away, and wet coldness engulfed her instead of the warm rays of the sun. 

For a moment the strong hand let Naomi go, but then a whole arm slung around her from behind and wedged her in while she was being pulled down, down into her nightmares.

The light from the sun became fainter. The coldness grew.

The body of the creature pressed against her spine, swung back and forth, back and forth. Like a fish. The motion distracted Naomi for a few seconds, until she remembered her fears. Her lungs felt strangely tight. A rush of panic surged through her body. She struggled to free herself, but the arm held her as if it were made of steel.

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The Crack Beneath the Worlds – Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2 – UNDER ATTACK

Jerick looked down at the ship, his green eyes wide with horror. “Th-they’re shooting at us! All the sailors are running around like crazy. They’re trying to take cover or something, like we’re gonna attack them.”

Angry shouts and agitated voices rang through the air. What could this mean?

Jerick stared at Naomi, waiting for her to come up with some brilliant idea.

Naomi returned Jerick’s gaze with a blank look. Then her eyes suddenly shot open. “The balloon, of course!”

“What about it?”

“Don’t you remember?” Naomi pointed up. “It’s shaped like a dragon.”

Their balloon was not round like most balloons, but shaped like a fierce dragon with green skin, open jaws and big, pointy teeth.

“And you mean—”

“I mean, look at the ship … how old it is. And the sailors. Whoever they are, I don’t think they’ve ever seen a hot-air balloon before, and maybe … I don’t know, this might be a little far-fetched, but maybe they still believe in dragons, and maybe they think our balloon is a dragon.”

“This balloon a real honest-to-goodness dragon?” Jerick frowned and laughed. “Right! These sailors can’t be very bright if they really believe that.”

“But think, Jerick. Imagine you’d never seen a balloon, and of course you’d never seen a dragon either, except in pictures, because dragons of course don’t exist—but imagine you firmly believed in them, and then during a sea voyage you saw this. Wouldn’t you also take cover and shoot at it?”

“Well, maybe, but I don’t believe—”

Another whizzing sound. An arrow flew right over their heads. Fortunately, it also missed the balloon and disappeared below.

“DOWN!” Jerick pulled Naomi to the floor. “We’ve got to do something, and quick.”

“I think I’ve got an idea.”

“What did you say?”

“I … I said I think I’ve got an idea.”

“Well … watcha waiting for?”

Naomi fumbled with her pink shirt. “I think we should lower the balloon even more and … and show ourselves to the sailors … to wave at them or something I mean.”

“Are you crazy? They’ll shoot a thousand holes into the balloon in no time, and a few holes in us too. It’s a wonder they haven’t done it already. Maybe we’re still too high for most of their bows, or maybe they don’t want to waste all their arrows before the mighty dragon attacks. Anyway, if we lower the balloon they’ll definitely shoot us. No, we should—why didn’t I think of that before?—we should do the opposite. We should go higher up, out of reach of even their best bows.”

“And then what, Jerick? Don’t you see that this ship is our only chance? There’s only ocean out there. We’ll drown if we can’t get on this ship.”

Jerick did not answer. He hadn’t thought of that in the distress of the moment.

“So we should lower the balloon,” Naomi continued, “and wave at the sailors, and when they see a boy and a girl in a basket hanging from the dragon, they must put two and two together and—”

“—and realize that it’s not a real dragon.”

“Exactly.”

“Hmmm. Okay.” Jerick stood up and brushed his wet hair from his forehead. “It’s a bit risky, but … well, I figure it’s our only chance.”

They peered over the rim of the basket.

“Whoa! Look at how low we are already,” Jerick said.

The ship seemed much bigger than she had appeared at first, and the sailors could also be seen quite distinctly. They were crouching each with one knee on the deck, grim faces directed toward the dragon and drawn bows held in their outstretched hands. No one was shooting. Apparently everyone was waiting for the dragon to make a sudden move.

“We can just as well start waving now,” Naomi said. “If we can see them that clearly, they might see us too. The lower we get, the more dangerous it’ll become.”

“Like I said.”

They both began to wave, at first still hiding most of their bodies in the basket (with a frequent glance toward the protruding arrowhead, which looked very sharp indeed), but then they leaned farther over the rim and gesticulated at the bearded men. Naomi’s legs hung dangerously high in the air. Jerick shouted at them, and Naomi joined in, “We’re only a boy and a girl. You don’t need to be afraid. This isn’t a real dragon; it’s only a balloon. You can lower your weapons. Please don’t shoot us!”

It worked. Or so they thought. The sailors noticed them. It was evident from the way they looked at the basket and talked to each other.

“Hurray! It’s working,” Jerick exulted.

“Yes, they’ve definitely noticed us,” Naomi said. “But it’s weird. They don’t seem to be relieved at all. They’re even more wound up than before. Listen to them. It doesn’t sound to me as if they think the danger’s over.”

Suddenly one of the sailors shouted something to the others and slung his bow on his back. He jumped up and ran over to the mast and climbed it.

“What’s he doing?”

Before Jerick could wonder any further, the man reached the top of the mast and leaped onto the platform at the masthead. Within less than a second, almost too fast for Jerick to see, he took his bow, fitted an arrow on it, and drew it. Aiming at the balloon, and with a terrifying tone of courage in his voice, he roared, “Ressoger echrad, sall id redinker eerf redo uder striv ni retoter echrad!” (“Great dragon, let the children go free or you will be a dead dragon!”)

“What is he doing?” Jerick said again. “And what’s he saying? I didn’t understand a word.” He waved at the man, who, since the balloon had steadily descended, was very close to them. “Hey, sailorman.” Jerick sounded braver than he felt. “What are you doing? This is just a balloon. You can put your bow away.” And he tried to smile and show through his gestures that this “dragon” was quite harmless.

The man knitted his brows. His eyes darted from the balloon to the children and back. Confusion replaced the look of courage in his face. Jerick saw his indecision and tried to think what might keep him from doing something stupid. “Let’s throw him a rope and signal to him that he should tie it to the mast.”

“Okay, let’s.” Naomi helped Jerick to pick up a rope from the basket.

“Hey, sailor, catch this.” Jerick threw the rope toward him. The man, perhaps mostly out of reflex, tossed bow and arrow in one hand and caught the rope with the other.

“Tie it, tie it to the mast.” The children tied imaginary knots in the air. For a moment the man just stood there, bow and arrow in one hand, the rope in the other. But finally, with one last unsure glance at the dragon, he tied the rope to the mast.

As soon as he was finished, Jerick and Naomi pulled on the rope as hard as they could. The balloon inched closer to the mast. When the man saw what they were doing, he grabbed the rope, and after a few pulls the basket bumped against the railing of the platform. And now, for the first time, they could study each other in peace.

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The Crack Beneath the Worlds – Chapter 1

This is the first chapter of my fantasy novel The Crack Beneath the Worlds:

 

CHAPTER 1 – VOICES IN THE CLOUD

“Finally!” Jerick kicked hard against the propane tank of the hot-air balloon. “Why didn’t this darned thing turn off earlier?”

“And why did we have to climb in here at all? This was the dumbest idea you’ve ever had.” Naomi clung to the side of the basket, which was suspended a hundred feet above ground. And rising fast.

Even for Jerick, hijacking a hot-air balloon belonged to the category of Exceptionally Rare Achievements. An ordinary day in the life of Jerick Faust might include carrying a gun replica through a security check, accidentally erasing all of his father’s work from his computer, or lighting firecrackers in his room and almost burning down the whole house. But not hijacking a balloon.

The feat was all the greater in that he managed to drag his little sister along, Naomi, who would not even steal a cookie without asking their mother.

Naomi was so tiny she wore little kids’ clothes instead of proper outfits for a girl her age. Today’s shirt was pink-purple bearing the picture of a doll stroller, complete with a smiley doll waving its chubby hand and the words “My Doll Is All I Need” printed on top. Needless to say, Naomi never wore the shirt at school.

“What are we gonna do now?” Naomi asked. She stood up on her toes and stretched herself to be able to put her button nose over the rim of the basket. Her face was wet from crying.

“What we’re gonna do?” said Jerick, oblivious to her tears. “I’m gonna land this baby, of course. What else?”

“Yeah, like you can actually do that.”

“Of course I can. I’m a balloon expert.” He put on his best patronizing smirk and stroked his reddish-blond spikes, which were completely unlike Naomi’s straight dark hair. All in all the two looked so different that few people believed they were siblings.

“See, this thing here is called a burner,” Jerick pointed to the metal object underneath the opening of the balloon. “It turns propane into fire and blasts the heat into the mouth of the so-called envelope to make the balloon rise. Now that the thing has finally turned off, all I have to do is pull on this control line here, which opens a flap at the top of the balloon for a moment, and voila!—we’ll start going down.”

“And why couldn’t you have just pulled the line while the burner was still on? Wouldn’t that have worked too?”

“Um.” Jerick opened his mouth like a fish and shut it again. “I, well …”

Before Jerick could come up with a far-fetched explanation, a wet cloud appeared out of nowhere and enveloped the balloon.

“Where on earth did that come from?” Jerick cried. “I thought it was a clear day. Did you see any clouds?”

Naomi said nothing.

“OK, well, I’m gonna pull the line anyway, I’m sure we’ll get out of the cloud then, and—”

A shrill voice echoed through the cloud, and it wasn’t Naomi’s. After a short pause, another voice answered, and then a third joined in. The voices sounded as if they were incantations in a foreign language, half singing, half commanding, like the pronouncement of a spell.

Jerick looked left and right, turned in a circle, bent over the edge of the basket and peered down. Nothing. Nothing but the gray cloud. “You hear that too?”

Naomi nodded.

“Seems like they’re right here in this cloud—whatever they are,” Jerick said.

The incantations grew louder. They moved all around them now, as if a whole choir of invisible witches dwelt in the cloud.

Naomi crawled into a corner of the basket and squatted down.

Jerick held his breath. An icy shiver coursed up and down his spine.

All at once, the cloud rent open and the warmth of the sun engulfed the wet faces of the children.

The voices were gone. The children exhaled.

“What was that?” Naomi asked.

“I don’t know, but we’re out of it now. Time to bring this thing down.”

But when Jerick looked toward the ground to see where to land the balloon, he froze.

“I can’t believe this,” he said. “Nomers!”

○ ○ ○

Ever since Naomi was five, Jerick had been calling her “Nomers,” even though she couldn’t stand the nickname. It sounded too much like a mathematical equation to her, not at all like a reflection of her inner being. She thought things should have names that befitted their character. Like a lullaby, or a golden chalice. Lul-la-by sounded calming, and a golden chalice sounded precious. Or the word lovely. Lovely truly sounded lovely, she thought. And crunchy sounded like you could bite it with a crunch. Nomers, on the other hand, didn’t sound like the person she was at all.

At the moment, though, she was much too afraid to think about that. So all she said was, “Yes?”

“Come here.”

Naomi got up to stand beside Jerick. And then she, too, held her breath. “W-where are we?”

“I don’t know.”

A lump swelled in Naomi’s throat. Down there, far underneath them, as far as the eye could see, shimmered the deep blue of an ocean. There was no land in sight. “There aren’t any oceans close to the festival grounds, are there?”

“No, not for miles around. We’re in the middle of the country, or at least that’s where we should be. I’ve got no idea where we actually are.”

“Oh Jerick!” Naomi began to sob. “How awful! What’s happened to us? Oh, I wish I’d stayed with Mom and Dad. And … and I wish I hadn’t followed you into this stupid balloon!”

Jerick looked as if he was close to tears himself, but he’d of course never cry in front of Naomi. He turned away from her, bent his head over the edge of the basket, and looked straight down. Naomi suspected that he wanted to wipe a few tears from his eyes without her noticing.

He barely had time to do so. “A SHIP! Look! There’s a ship!” he shouted and pointed at the water.

A ship? Naomi pulled herself up on the rim of the basket, her feet dangling in the air. She craned her head forward and peeked down—cautiously, because she was afraid she might fall out. Yes, Jerick was right. Directly underneath the balloon, an old-fashioned sailing ship glided through the water. Her bow cut through the gushing waves and her stern left a trail of white foam behind. Looks like a Viking ship, Naomi thought.

This day was getting more confusing with every minute. What was she to make of a Viking ship in an unknown ocean?

A quick whizzing sound and a thump cut through her musings. After a brief pause, trying to figure out what had happened, she let go of the rim, stumbled onto the bottom of the basket, and screamed. An arrowhead stuck through the cane only a hand’s breadth away from where she had been hanging!

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Spirits in Bondage

I hope being responsible for the Introduction of the book does not disqualify me from posting a review. As far as I am concerned, you may skip the Introduction anyway, to get the more quickly to the actual content: C. S. Lewis’ cycle of the most heart-wrenching and at the same time incredibly beautiful poems.

The first part begins with the words, “Satan Speaks: I am Nature, the Mighty Mother, I am the law: ye have none other,” and those lines set the tone for the rest of the work. An ultimately pessimistic view of nature is presented here, albeit one that has room for the aesthetic experience of a poet who can derive much joy from this life – and yet longs for the beyond.

This longing, this depiction of darkness in this world and the cry that it ought to be different, this indignation at “God for not existing,” as C. S. Lewis later put it, is very evident in “Spirits in Bondage.”

Overall, I must say, it is probably my favorite work of poetry by Lewis. In a time when Lewis has become somewhat of an Anglo-Saxon Protestant Pope, it is refreshing to step into his soul and discover the full breadth of his torn humanity – perhaps only rivaled by “A Grief Observed” and “Till We Have Faces,” which, I think, both bear certain similarities to “Spirits in Bondage.” All three deal with the question, “Why are there no answers when I need them?” “Spirits,” though, does so more poetically than the other two.

It’s certainly a book that any reader of C. S. Lewis shouldn’t miss out on.

An Experiment in Criticism

C.S. Lewis is the very embodiment of the open-minded yet conservative Christian, of which “An Experiment in Criticism” is perhaps the best example.

Many Christians today have what C.S. Lewis calls a “problem of belief.” If they read books like “Harry Potter” at all (which they usually do not), they quickly voice their disagreement with certain ethical implications or their concern that the books incite dangerous magical practices (they also frequently voice their disagreement even when they have not read the books). Or they point out that God is totally left out of the picture.

Aside from the question whether such qualms are justified, C.S. Lewis would reply that in good reading there ought to be no “problem of belief.” “A true lover of literature should be in one way like an honest examiner, who is prepared to give the highest marks to the telling, felicitous and well-documented exposition of views he dissents from or even abominates,” says Lewis in “An Experiment in Criticism.” “I read Lucretius and Dante at a time when (by and large) I agreed with Lucretius. I have read them since I came (by and large) to agree with Dante. I cannot find that this has much altered my experience, or at all altered my evaluation, of either.”

In the book, C.S. Lewis maintains that one of the prime achievements in every good fiction “has nothing to do with truth or philosophy or a Weltanschauung” (worldview) at all. This is especially true of Lewis’s favorite kind of fiction: fantasy. The primary value he saw in reading fantasy was not that he could learn truths about life but that through it he could be more than himself. He wanted to “see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts,” as well as with his own. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, was not enough. He wanted to see what others had invented.

He would therefore (I think) have delighted to enter into the beliefs of J.K. Rowling or Philip Pullman, even though, as a Christian, he would have thought certain aspects of them untrue. His defense for doing this, “for occupying his heart with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feelings” which he tried to avoid having in his own person, was that in reading them he became “a thousand men and yet remained” himself. He saw “with a myriad eyes,” but it was still he who saw. “Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing,” he transcended himself; and was never more himself than when he did. “The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison,” he wrote.

It is needless to say that in this way C.S. Lewis learned much more from his reading than a person who looks in every book for truths about life, only to find on every page his own face staring at him. Such a person, says Lewis, “attributes to his chosen author what he believes to be wisdom; and the sort of thing that seems wise to him will obviously be determined by his own caliber. If he is a fool he will find and admire foolishness; if he is a mediocrity, platitude, in all his favourties. At best he is a profound thinker himself, and what he acclaims as his author’s philosophy might in itself be good, but in reality be merely his own.”

C.S. Lewis was not like that. He honestly tried to put himself into the shoes of the authors he was reading.

Whether or not you agree with C.S. Lewis’s approach to reading, if you want to get to know Lewis the reader and not just the writer, “An Experiment in Criticism” is your prime source.

An admirable and provocative little book.

Top Novels

Today, my wife showed me some BBC list of 100 great English-language novels and asked me which of them I had read. I was surprised that I actually didn’t do so badly; I have read more than half of them. Here are the books I was able to tick off on the list:

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (in part)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (only some of them)
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger 
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger 
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (still have to finish it)
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (in part)
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen 
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini 
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in part)
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in part) 
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 
75 Ulysses – James Joyce (two-thirds of it)
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (in part)

Thomas Hobbes’ *Leviathan*: Inexorably Linked to Our World Today

*Leviathan* is one of those books that are more exiting to read about than to actually read. Written in Paris during the English Civil War in the mid 1600s, the book was Thomas Hobbes’ (a tutor and philosopher) attempt to look at the causes of such wars and propose a solution. His proposed solution and accompanying thoughts, however, were so controversial that his life was no longer safe in Paris. He had to flee back to England and ask the new English government for protection.

But his troubles were far from over. In 1666, a bill against atheism and profanity was introduced and *Leviathan* was singled out as a particularly blasphemous book. “Hobbism” even became somewhat of a synonym for everything irreligious and amoral.

This is hard to understand in the 21st century, as the shock value of the work has significantly decreased. If anything, *Leviathan* seems to lull on and on in a dry mathematician’s language, endlessly obsessing with order:

- Since people’s natural inclinations always bring them into conflict with one another (the English Civil War, for instance), it is better to relinquish some of their freedom to a sovereign, who will keep order.

- Since no one can know for certain which one is the right religion or, within Christianity, which canon of the Bible has the claim to inspiration, it is better to leave these matters in the hands of the state. Religious contentions do, after all, destabilize society, as it did in the devastating Thirty Years’ War – a war mostly between Protestants and Catholics – that was still going on when Hobbes developed his thoughts for *Leviathan*.

- Since some scientific discoveries (Galileo was a contemporary of Hobbes’), works of art, and other forms of knowledge and human creativity can lead to disorder, rebellion and sedition, it is better for the sovereign to silence them if he sees fit.

All of this sounds so totalitarian to the modern Western ear that one might wonder why *Leviathan* is still revered today. The reason is Hobbes’ idea of a contract between the people and its government. Unlike almost everyone in Europe until Hobbes, he did not see the right to govern as a commission from above (“God put the sovereign in place and therefore he ought to be obeyed”) but as a commission from below (“The people need order and therefore relinquish some of their freedom to a government”).

Even though, given the historical circumstances of the Civil War and the Thirty Years’ War, Hobbes understandably only took this thought as far as an autocratic government based on the consent of the people, later thinkers were able to pick up on that idea and develop it further. John Locke in the 17th and Rousseau in the 18th century took the concept of the social contract and used it to lay the foundation for modern democracies, first realized in America, then in Europe, and finally (more or less successfully) in the rest of the world.

That is why *Leviathan* is so important. It is inexorably linked to the world we live in, and perhaps there is even a lesson or two in it for places like Iraq.

Conclusion: a bit dry, even for a 17th-century work of political philosophy, but utterly deserving its place in history.

Watership Down: Beauty, Depth, and Melancholy

 

What comes to our minds when we pick up a book about talking rabbits? Do we expect a fuzzy, juvenile story, or even cartoon-like animals that might have hopped straight out of a Walt Disney studio?

If these are our expectations when picking up Richard Adam’s Watership Down, we are wide off the mark. It is expressly not a fuzzy story merely intended to delight little children. When it was first published in 1972, Adams and his publisher tried to convince the public that a story about talking rabbits can be serious material, to be read both by children and adults. And they were successful. Today, Watership Down holds a firm place among the British classics that are beloved by people of almost all ages.

But before we get to the actual story, a little more needs to be said about Richard Adams. He was born in England in 1920 and studied history in Oxford. After serving in World War II, he joined the Civil Service, from which he retired in 1974. Throughout his life, he had a deep love for English literature, country walking, and the more traditional joys of English culture. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the English countryside plays such an important role in Watership Down, which was the first book he published.

Books he published since his retirement from Civil Service include Shardik, The Iron Wolf and Other Stories, and Voyage Through the Anarctic. These, however, have not been as well received by critics as Watership Down.

THE STORY

“THIS IDEALLY SITUATED ESTATE,
COMPRISING SIX ACRES OF EXCELLENT BUILDING LAND,
IS TO BE DEVELOPED WITH HIGH CLASS MODERN RESIDENCES
BY SUTCH AND MARTIN, LIMITED, OF NEWBURY, BERKS.”

Such reads a notice board that is put up near a rabbits’ warren. But since rabbits cannot read human writings, they do not understand that the sign spells the end of their warren. They do, however, have among them a weak, small rabbit called Fiver who has prophetic abilities. Although he cannot put his paw on it, Fiver senses that something terrible is about to happen. He warns the Chief Rabbit of the impending danger, but to no avail. Growing desperate, he and a few companions flee the warren.

Thus begins a journey beset with dangers, death, grief, and a struggle for survival. The main characters are the already mentioned Fiver, known for his otherworldly insight; Bigwig, the biggest and strongest of the group; Blackberry, a rabbit with wits and brain power; and Hazel, whose authority makes him the future Chief Rabbit.

The first main stop of the rabbits is at another, seemingly prosperous, warren. Once again it is only Fiver who senses that something is terribly wrong with the place. But they find out soon enough: Bigwig gets caught in a rabbit snare set by humans. It is then that the rabbits realize the truth about this peaceful warren: it is maintained by humans for raising and killing rabbits.

Bigwig survives and learns his lesson of humility. As of now, he begins listening to Fiver.

After overcoming more dangers, the rabbits finally start a new warren on a hill named Watership Down. The only problem is that they have no does among them; their warren will therefore die out within a few years. Spurred on by the desire to produce offspring, the rabbits go in search of does that are willing to join their warren. In this they get help from a seagull, who becomes a very unusual friend of the rabbits.

As for the end of the story – well, that you will have to read for yourself.

CONCLUSION
My description above is far from capturing the beauty, depth, and melancholy of the book. For in the experiences, faith, and deeds of the rabbits, we see a reflection of our own lives. As Adams writes: “Rabbits (…) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now.”