The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
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This was really interesting. While it's supposedly about Tolkien, Lewis, Barfield, and Williams, the vast majority is about Tolkien and Lewis - this is fine as they were the two I was most interested in. There's a lot of information and detail in this. I got a little annoyed with how precious Tolkien (Lewis to a lesser degree) was with his writing, but it's to be expected when you know how much work was put into all the LotR and related books. I learned so much in this and probably would have gotten a bit more out of it if I was more familiar with all the writings discussed. Really excellent.
Short review: I am very familiar with the biography of Lewis. I have read dozens of books by and about Lewis. I am somewhat familiar with Tolkien. I have read one book by Charles Williams and did not know anything about Barfield.
The basic biography of Lewis at the beginning was fairly boring because I was very aware of it and nothing new seemed to be revealed. But by the second half of the book enough other characters that I was not aware of had been introduced. And the literary analysis in the second half of the book was very helpful. Overall this is well worth reading. Although if I was able to have skipped a lot of the first quarter of the book, I probably would have enjoyed it more.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-fellowship/