Inscription shows this was my Christmas gift to Dave 1991 - oops! ( )

“All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis 1922-1927” by C.S. Lewis

Tedious throughout with the minutiae of his daily studies, there is - nevertheless - enough jewels to make it worth the read. This is especially true of the written portraits of colleagues from Oxford, in an appendix at the end.

This was the first time I’ve ever read anything of Lewis when he was still an atheist. It shows. His apathy and selfishness battle against each other and it becomes clear why he was a bachelor for so long. ( )

Mainly for hardcore Lewis buffs

I think that few people who aren't serious students of C. S. Lewis will find this item very interesting. Although Lewis was urged to write it by "his adopted mother" Mrs. Moore, it really appears to be a typical diary, filled with a lot of mundane details of life. For example, a substantial amount of space is devoted to recounting the routes Lewis took in walking the family dog, Pat. Of course, Lewis was a professional writer, and his descriptions of the weather and landscapes he encountered on his walks are not completely without interest, but they'd probably be of a lot more interest to people familiar with the Oxford area than the rest of us.

Nevertheless, I think that people with a deep interest in Lewis's life will be glad they read this diary. It certainly helped correct my faulty impression that all those affiliated with Oxford a century ago were members of the leisure class. Lewis, the intellectual, spent a lot of his life being Lewis, the household laborer--scrubbing floors, painting rooms, preparing food, mowing the lawn, cleaning the kitchen, etc. And walking wasn't just a form of recreation for Lewis's household, it was a major form of transportation (as was bike riding). Furthermore, there's a lot of data in this diary that ought to be taken into account when analyzing the nature of Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore. I think I understand that relationship even less after reading this diary than I did before, but at least my previous impressions have been proven to be rather simplistic.

Finally, interspersed among the day-to-day details are accounts of some remarkable events, most notably that of Dr. John Hawkins Askins' descent into madness. Quite harrowing. ( )