Surprised by Joy
Autobiography of the English theologian, novelist, and scholar, concerning his early years. The author's spiritual journey from Chrisitanity to atheism and then back to Christianity.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
4mentions
4people
2014–2022years
25% recommend75% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For a different perspective of sexuality in a male only environment, I recommend Surprised By Joy, by C. S. Lewis. It begins with his life in boarding school.
Lewis could quite easily have been describing life in prison. I found it astonishing.
Even as a passionate hiker, I can barely imagine what does it mean to cross a mountain pass in winter, with the equipment they had at the time.The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it “annihilates space.” It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy).- Wow I love this guy's content (immediately got sidetracked away from the linked page and started reading at a frenetic pace). It is the sort of treasure trove that I am lucky to stumble upon once a year at most.
In fact, reading this stuff really stirred me up. It makes me think of the C.S. Lewis book "Surprised by Joy" which I think described this sort of feeling, but with the feelings in the book sourced from fiction/fantasy works. At least that is what I remember from reading it 7 years ago.
Edit: Trying to think of other websites that I loved like this:
AfroTechMods.com like 20 years ago
Ludens.cl about 10 years ago
...these are hard to think of, but I'm sure it is not a once-a-decade event.
- True enough. All generations need this type of speech. For example, I first came across the term chronological snobbery reading C.S. Lewis, according to Wikipedia he used it in "Surprised by Joy" which was written 50 years ago. Since he coined the term to describe the thought patterns in his day, we can easily tell that generations before Millennials have also believed things because they were modern rather than because they were true. Different generations may sometimes have different weeds to pull, and I wish he describe his own biases which he overcame.
