I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

C.S. Lewis on re-reading. (The Commonplace Book Project)

You can find all the posts in The Commonplace Book Project here:

“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” — C.S. Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greeves (February 1932)

Most Fridays, my husband and I go to an auction about ten miles from our house. It’s kind of a combination of a garage sale and a thrift store, with an auctioneer.

There’s always furniture. Dining room sets, couches, hutches, dressers.

And there’s always a wardrobe or two.

One of these days, I tell my husband, I’m going to find the right wardrobe. I’ll know it when I see it. And I’m going to buy it and fill it with thrift-store fur coats.

It doesn’t matter if the coats fit. I’ll never wear them.

I just want a wardrobe full of them in my work space. Or maybe my attic.

I want a portal to Narnia to inspire my imagination.

Today’s quote is completely appropriate, because I don’t think there are books I’ve re-read more often than I’ve read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. That one especially, but all of the Narnia books.

I still have the white boxed set of C.S. Lewis’ books that my grandmother gave me for my tenth birthday.

I’ve always been an escape reader. I want a story to take me somewhere and I want that somewhere to be mine. There are very few things that can compare with reading a book and having it do that for you. Transport you.

The Chronicles of Narnia were among the first books that did that for me.

I’m not one of those people who insists on reading a book before I see the movie. In fact, sometimes that ruins the movie for me, because the book is so much better. And I just really love movies. Somtimes, I want to be able to enjoy them without comparing them to the books they’re based on.

But Narnia is different. It’s such pure imagination that anything that directs that too visually changes it, I think.

I love the movies that came out in the early aughties, but I’ve always been grateful they weren’t around when I was ten. I needed to build my own Narnia in my imagination. I needed to know what it felt like to go into Mr. Tumnus’s house for tea or sit in the White Witch’s sleigh and eat Turkish Delight.

It looks like Netflix is working on a series of movies based on the books — and I look forward to them. But I hope that kids still read the books. Preferably first.

I’ve added Lewis’s Surprised by Joy to my reading list. His wife’s name was Joy and I thought it was a book about her or his life with her, but it turns out he wrote it before he knew her. It’s about his personal, life-long search for joy.

The movie Shadowlands is based on the book that Lewis did write about his wife, A Grief Observed. I put this movie on while I was writing this post and was struck by how remarkable it is that Anthony Hopkins can disappear into this role and become C.S. Lewis, instead of Hannibal Lecter in a C.S. Lewis suit.

Today’s Poem:

As the Ruin Falls by C.S. Lewis

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you. I never had a selfless thought since I was born. I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through: I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek, I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin: I talk of love — a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek — But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack. I see the chasm. And everything you are was making My heart into a bridge by which I might get back From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains.

Thanks for reading and clapping (to let me know you enjoyed it!) If you’d like to get these daily doses of inspiration in your inbox, fill out the form below.

(DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links.)

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.