For Christmas, we bought all 7 volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis, in a single book. I never guessed that I'd actually read the whole thing by mid-February, but it turns out I did!

Throughout all the books, I felt like I was sitting on a rug, with Mr. Lewis sitting before me in a simple chair and telling me the story in a grandfatherly voice. I quite enjoyed the fantasy, characters, cultures, symbols, and connections with our world. I see a lot of similarity between this story and the stories by Lewis' friend, J. R. R. Tolkien. The main difference is that the Narnia books use more specific symbols.

I ought to have read the Narnia series when I was younger, but I didn't, and here's why. Back in fifth grade, my teacher read one of the books to the class, and I constantly cringed at the way she emphasized the letter R in "Narnia" and "wardrobe". It annoyed me enough that I couldn't focus on the story. I wondered why the author was so fond of the letter R! Did he want kids to suffer? Today, I quite enjoy hearing different accents, so that particular childish barrier is finally broken.