$500.00...Really?

Before my son and I left the local Deseret Industries thrift store (Better known as D.I.) the other night, we decided to check out the items under glass, or the collectables. There's usually interesting items that are kept in that section. And if you want to get a better look at them, it requires a store employee to open up the glass.

It was my son who spotted the set of C.S. Lewis books.

"Wow--those are five-hundred dollars for that set."

I wondered if I'd heard him correctly. There's not many things in that store that can fetch that kind of price. You see in the picture the set is of works by C.S. Lewis. The titles of:

A Grief Observed

The Great Divorce

The Screwtape Letters

Surprised by Joy

The Four Loves

Mere Christianity

But $500? That's a lot of money.

Since I don't know much about the value of book collections, my son and I wondered why they were so expensive. We thought maybe they were signed by the author himself. It's possible, but the books look brand new and Mr. Lewis died on November 22, 1963 (I remember the date because another death on that date garners all the attention...).

Let's assume the books aren't signed by the author. That makes the cost of this set even more of a mystery. I suppose had we called over a store employee we could have taken them out of the glass case and inspected them better. 

Then again, at five-hundred bucks, maybe I wouldn't want to even touch them.

C. S. Lewis's "The Magician's Nephew"...A Book Review

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It's been several years since I first read Lewis' The Magician's Nephew. I remembered that I loved it. So it surprised me that when I wanted a quick read after finishing Ben Mezrich's Once Upon a Time in Russia. That was kind of a heavy book with all the political unrest and corporate disfunction, I just wanted something easy to read so I thought I'd check out any available C. S. Lewis story.

I found The Magician's Nephew and I had forgotten that I had already read it.

I'm glad I checked it out again!

I started writing a fantasy story a few weeks ago and reading this book while doing that has given me a whole new appreciation of C. S. Lewis, someone I already hold in high regard. His Narnia world is seems as real as if we could enter the wardrobe and step right through, but what I love about The Magician's Nephew is the way Lewis explains how it all began. One of the toughest things about writing a fantasy story is how to get it started. In an imaginary world there are so many ways to begin a story. Should you begin a la James Michener and begin at the dawn of time? Or use another way? There are so many choices.

I'm sure most of you have not only heard of The Magician's Nephew, but have read it as well, so there's probably not a lot I can say about this book you don't already know. But I can say that even if you've read it in the past, it's an excellent book to re-read. You can most likely read it in a day or over a couple of evenings.

It's something I highly recommend.

* Photo used without permission from: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65605.The_Magician_s_Nephew?ac=1