Books as Friends

At St Mary's Men's group this Saturday morning we talked about books, the ability to sit down with a friend like Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Louis Stevenson, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien. I went around the table and asked for the one book one couldn't do without; Daniel Liporto cited David Copperfield---Dickens best; Niall Macmanus cited the Bible bringing out the fact that we are quite biblically illiterate today---and as one who taught 6th grade religious-ed i would have to agree; Bill Rosser brought up Cicero. Mike Olivo "When Legends Die" (author unremembered); Greg Prentice came up with Mark Twain's Joan of Arc. Mark Brunini, a good orthodox dictionary; I submitted a dystopian grouping: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Huxley's Brave New World, and Lewis's That Hideous Strength--- these help us in being alert to all the hypnopaedia and double-think infecting our minds; Eric Josephson seconded the Bible.
One of the problems with today's reading climate---this the real 'climate change' is that kids don't often read the classics but are given books that further a certain political social agenda. One of the fallouts of such books is that kids, and grown-ups alike, are subjected to fickle friends that divide rather than unite generations with a common canon. Such ungood and unlasting friends are only in the business of manipulating the mind. Instead may we have true friends upon our shelves, and may we visit them regularly, enjoying them with a cup of tea and in the atmosphere of truth.