Zoned Out

I’ve been gone ages, haven’t I? Things were pretty much hectic on all fronts that I haven’t got the time to really think things over (yeah, right, like I do that!). What have I been up to lately? Nothing much, just read a few books, and I’m still recovering from a few sick days that really pushed me to stay in bed (Don’t you love being under medication? Everything is a blur.)

I finished a complete re-read of the Half-Blood Prince (if I haven’t mentioned that yet). Well, I’ve finally appreciated how wonderful the story is. It may not be one of my favourites, but it is way up there. There’s just many questions answered, but there are still new ones raised.

I’ve started reading C. S, Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia; well, because the movie is opening on December and partly out of curiosity because the Harry Potter books are pretty much compared to this series. I read them not in the order the books were published, but according to the author’s preferred order – in chronological sequence of events. I’ve already finished The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, and only got a few chapters left in Prince Caspian; three books more to tackle, that is. I completely understood now why the religious people laud about these works – right from the first book published, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. We’ll see if it is pretty much obvious in the film adaptation.

It was a different world but totally not far from the worlds of Tolkien and Rowling – all riddled with witchcraft and sorcery, magic and pure evil; although in Narnia, I don’t think the White Witch Jadis is something you can compare to Lord Voldemort or Sauron or Morgoth.

The characters in Narnia aren’t truly drawn out – bet the filmmakers are going to have a hard time – they were there like pawns for a brief moment of time in the land not leaving much of an scratch on the reader’s mind. Not so much as the characters in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, wherein they shape the story and the geography of the place. Lewis’ world is parallel to our world today (maybe in the 1950s) – in a different plane; whereas, Tolkien’s is somewhat ancient – like the reader could feel that these may be the stories of his predecessors (far, far away but possible).

Not that I am saying that Narnia is not any good; it may not just have reached the level of what I am expecting from it. It is, after all, children’s books. Maybe if I read it before I read Tolkien’s works, then I could have appreciated it in more. But hey! I haven’t finished the whole series yet – so I’m still hoping for some redemption in the next three books.

Books can mean anything the reader would want them to be. When one sits down to read a book, somewhere in his mind he had an idea of ‘what kind of book he is holding’, and that affects his reading of it. All books are complicated things: muttering to the readers in different contradictory voices, refusing to stay the same when we go back to them; tying them down robs them of their magic.