Grace & Knowledge Blog

I was pleased to learn about a week ago that some of P.G. Wodehouse's early novels can be downloaded to the Amazon Kindle for free.

About 15 years ago, Sherry and I had a great time reading through all of Wodehouse's Jeeves stories.  I'm now reading to her Uneasy Money, a romantic comedy that was first published in the U.S. in 1916 after appearing in installments in the Saturday Evening Post. 

Although this novel was written during World War I, it mentions nothing directly about the war.  Wodehouse's characters are concerned about things like golf, baseball, and marriage, but they live in a world without wars and rumors of wars.  His readers, who were weighed down enough by world events, no doubt appreciated the opportunity to escape temporarily from the bad news reported daily in the press. 

Uneasy Money was made into a silent movie in 1918.  There's enough physical comedy (e.g., a pet monkey that throws eggs) and twists and turns of plot in the book to support a good silent movie, but there's no way the movie could have done justice to Wodehouse's dextrous use of the English language, the thing that makes his writing so much fun to read.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

In 2008 my son Timothy gave me a wonderful Father's Day gift--an Amazon Kindle ebook reader.

It didn't take me long to fall in love with this amazing little gadget, which I find is often as pleasant to read from as a conventional book.   (There are exceptions. The Kindle doesn't do well with pictures or graphs,  and I can't imagine trying to deal with a mathematical monograph in this format.) 

 My favorite features of the Kindle include:

• the ability to adjust the font size, effectively making every book a large print book.
• the ability to easily look up endnotes with a simple click.
• the fact that free samples are available. Most samples include about a chapter.  One very generous one--for the recent book Newton and the Counterfeiter--gives the first 60 pages or so.
• the fact that a number of classic literary works can be downloaded free of charge, and many others are just a few dollars.
• the fact that one can order a book or free sample and start reading it right away.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

I've been reading War in Heaven, one of the seven novels written by Charles Williams, friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.  (Amazon has several of these novels available in Kindle editions for just $3.19 apiece.)

Early in the book, Williams has one of the characters thinking that Christianity

"was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist."

I think there's some real insight in this observation.  When we understand that we're living in a fallen world, we're not going to expect more from the world than it can realistically provide.  At ths same time, we're not going to be overcome with despair at the extent of the brokenness of the world, because we know that God is carrying out his plan of restoring his good creation. 

Tags: amazon kindle, books