Good, Better, Best: Books about Lewis, Tolkien and The Inklings

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My karate teacher has a saying: "Good, better, best, never let it rest, 'till your good is better, and your better is the best." Which is really about life (and particularly applicable right now, perhaps!), but I thought I could totally apply the "good, better, best" classification to a group of books. I've read a lot of books recently about Lewis and Tolkien--I spent basically all of March reading nothing else! I think I sent Merry well over a hundred Tolkien and Lewis facts that month (Love you, Merry!). A trickle of Tolkien and Lewis books has been seeping into my life since then, too. But for today, I thought I would take the nine Lewis-and-Tolkien books I read in March, and categorize them as Good, Better and Best. Enjoy!

Good:

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip and Carol Zaleski
I really enjoyed this absolute tome (I got it on Kindle so I wouldn't have to tote it around with me), which was actually the book that got me started on my immense Inklings research project. There's a lot of interesting information in here, and I thought it was well-organized. I just had a few issues with it: it including some slightly uncomfortable bits from Lewis's teenage letters (imo, teenage boys should never be held responsible for their letters, lol), it talked too much about Charles Williams and Owen Barfield's weird religious ideas and not enough about Lewis and Tolkien, and it didn't have much information about the other Inklings. In particular, I would love to have heard more about Fr. Gervase Mathew--why do all the Inklings books have so little information about him? 

A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and A Great War by Joseph Loconte 
This one was very interesting to read--I had never realized just how close WWI had come to depriving Christian literature of its two 20th-century giants, and it was illuminating to hear about Tolkien and Lewis's relationships with the war. However, I thought it was a bit too short, and rather narrow in focus.

The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth by Ruth S. Noel
This short dictionary of Tolkien's various languages was a quick read, but for anyone who wants to delve deeper into the details of Middle-Earth, it's very interesting! I especially liked the chapter where Ms. Noel went through and methodically translated many of the Elvish quotes in the books. FYI, the dedication is 100% worth translating out of the runic alphabet into the English one.

Better:

Tolkien: Man and Myth by Joseph Pierce 
This one is a Catholic perspective on Tolkien, which was very interesting to read. A lot of the information was stuff that I had read already, but that was because I read this after all the other Tolkien books. My only issue with it was that it included some ridiculous things that critics had said about Tolkien's books that were absolutely disgusting to read. It, of course, critiqued them afterwards, but oh man, never getting those images out of my head.

The Oxford Inklings by Colin Duriez
I really enjoyed this look at the Inklings as a group, which was a lot more broad than The Fellowship while still being detailed enough to keep my interest. This was one of the best books I read about the Inklings as a group, discussing at least some of the lives of most of the members (But still not Fr. Gervase! Why?!).

J. R. R. Tolkien by Colin Duriez
This book had a lot of repetition of information from the other Colin Duriez books, but it also had some new information about Tolkien, and was overall a good, solid biography that I liked reading. 

Best:

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Volume 3
Oh. My. Goodness. This book/letter compilation was over 1000 pages, (possibly over 2000?), made up of Lewis's existing letters from 1950-1963. Some of the letters are short and about mundane things, but there are a lot of letters which are long and meaty. This is mature Lewis, and so a lot of people are writing to ask him for spiritual advice, which he freely dispenses, and which is almost always extraordinarily excellent. I felt like I got to know him so much better through reading his letters, and I was really surprised by the ending for some reason? I mean, I know he died, but it felt so...abrupt...and I legit almost cried. Definitely worth the read, even though it was long! I've read Vol. 2 as well, and enjoyed it, albeit not as much as this one. I'm going to leave vol. 1 alone, though--see: no teenage boy should be responsible for their letters. 

Tolkien and C. S. Lewis by Colin Duriez
This book! I loved this book! It frankly and honestly addresses the oft-debated relationship between Lewis and Tolkien, with all of its ups and downs and ins and outs. There was so much good information, good quotes, and honest opinions. A must-read.

Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer
In the introduction of this book, the author said she had a more scholarly book on the interactions between the Inklings, which I now really want to read, but this book was fantastic! I LOVED hearing about the relationships between all the Inklings, and how they influenced each other's works. Highly recommend.

Thanks for reading! See you next Friday!

Have you read any of these? Are there any I missed? I'm always up for new Tolkien & Lewis books. :)

Also, I've been thinking about posting twice a week instead of once a week--do you have any thoughts/opinions about that? I would love to hear from you!