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Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis. Any of his nonfiction works have a style of writing that I seldom find. He has a dedication to reason and a step-by-step appr

Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis. Any of his nonfiction works have a style of writing that I seldom find. He has a dedication to reason and a step-by-step approach. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E. B. White. I liked writing since I learned how to. I didn't find this book until I was 17, and it unlocked me to write in a way that better helped others. The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker. I guess I like writing and language. Like C. S. Lewis, Steven Pinker has a way of writing about hard things that makes them easy to understand, even enjoyable. The subject matter is also news to most people, I think, who don't appreciate just how much that language is built in to the human mind from conception.

lelector 6y ago
+1 for The Elements of Style.
yalok 6y ago
+1 for Mere Christianity
jlkuester7 6y ago
+1 for Mere Christianity
EthanHeilman 6y ago
I liked Mere Christianity and I like C.S. Lewis's writing in general, but certain parts of Mere Christianity annoyed me because it felt manipulative. The most egregious example is Lewis's trilemma which seems constructed to win arguments, although I've never seen it win a single argument, not by a good faith argument but by putting someone on the spot and demanding that they to choose between three answers; Two of which will make them sound exceedingly rude and harm their standing in society.
- alan-crowe 6y ago
  The most interesting response that I've seen to Lewis's trilemma came from a psychiatric nurse. His experience of working in an psychiatric hospital was that people with delusions, such as thinking they are Napoleon, didn't seem particularly off. They were pleasant, and easy to care for. Over the course of weeks, one would get to know them. It would gradually become apparent that the delusional thinking went very deep. They really did need residential care. So Lewis's rhetoric depends on "lunatic" connoting "raving lunatic" and there are actually four branches to his tri-lemma: liar, God, raving lunatic, some-one with serious psychiatric issues who generally holds it together and seems normal much of the time.
  - goto11 6y ago
    My take on the trilemma is that Jesus never actually claimed to be God in the first place.
    - guide42 6y ago
      It didn't because declaring it was inconceivable in the Judeo view. But he might well understood he was God.
      - senderista 6y ago
        Claiming to be the Messiah is a long way from claiming to be God. There is good evidence Jesus claimed the former and not the latter (which wouldn’t even make sense to a first-century Jew).
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
The Abolition of Man, also by C. S. Lewis. Not explicitly Christian, it's a defense of classical ethics.
jenkstom 6y ago
I tried "Mere Christianity" at the urging of my mother. It was a series of logical fallacies one after the other. Although I will give him props, though, he tried to put a twist on most of them. Instead of a "false dilemma" it was a "false trilemma" and so on. It was still pretty silly.
mariodiana 6y ago
His Screwtape Letters are an excellent read.
jononomo 6y ago
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis is truly worth reading. Lewis's non-fiction is much better than his fiction, and his fiction is world-renowned. Mere Christianity is just so pure and clear.
ncmncm 6y ago
Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I chuck it in the trash. Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them. When White put out the second edition after Strunk died, he made up a bunch more rules, the went back and doctored Strunk's original text to follow his new rules. But he didn't check his own text. Typically he breaks his own rules on the same page where he is promoting them. The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." No, the books message is that there is a progression from undisciplined to rule-following to transcendent writing and you may be anywhere on that spectrum (though, if you are looking for a book on how to write, it's probably not deeply into the latter range), and that having the set of rules that the book presents available helps you move from the first to the second and prepare you to move to the third. In general, I think it's accurate enough. The rules it presents aren't the only set of rules that can do that, and there certainly is room for debate about their merits among competing alternatives.
- combatentropy 6y ago
  > its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing That's the opposite of its effect on me. > The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." I discerned no such put-down. > In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them. The gist of the book is the same as other books, such as The King's English, On Writing Well, and A Sense of Style. Stephen King praises the book in his own book, On Writing. I've also read a few articles on writing that say the same basic thing. The gist of these books is to write in service of the reader (as opposed to your ego) and to work hard at it (as opposed to being lazy and just "letting it all hang out" from the first draft), as it is a craft, like carpentry. Specifically, try to avoid wasting words, try to use the best word at each point, and try to order your words (and sentences and paragraphs) in the best way for the reader's understanding. There are some minor rules and preferences that perhaps Geoff Pullum is pouncing on, something like, "A clever horse is a good-natured one, not an ingenious one." I can see clearly that that is an archaism and take it for what it's worth. After all, the book is about 100 years old. But any writer should know that when you get down to that level of resolution, the detail shifts a bit in the quantum foam. Things on that level vary a bit from one decade to another, from one region to another. And language is like a craft, in that there are some rules that can be followed 90% of time, but it is not mathematics. You cannot distill a formula. I see Geoff Pullum taking it as black and white, but English does not submit to such simplification. Perhaps Strunk was more black and white, but White seems a bit looser, and I think their combination balances each other out nicely. It reminds me that no rule is absolute. However, for the vast majority of writers, they would benefit from at least trying to follow a lot of them! > The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White. For 80% of the writing I read in books, magazines, articles, etc., they suffer from the kinds of problems addressed in the Elements of Style. There may be other kinds of problems in a minority of writing, but far and away most writing suffers heavily from wordiness, vagueness, clumsy construction. I won't fault someone for incorrectly calling a horse "clever," but now I see why most writing tires me out so much --- and I can rewrite it in my head to be clearer.

lelector 6y ago

+1 for The Elements of Style.

yalok 6y ago

+1 for Mere Christianity

jlkuester7 6y ago

+1 for Mere Christianity

EthanHeilman 6y ago

I liked Mere Christianity and I like C.S. Lewis's writing in general, but certain parts of Mere Christianity annoyed me because it felt manipulative. The most egregious example is Lewis's trilemma which seems constructed to win arguments, although I've never seen it win a single argument, not by a good faith argument but by putting someone on the spot and demanding that they to choose between three answers; Two of which will make them sound exceedingly rude and harm their standing in society.

alan-crowe 6y ago
The most interesting response that I've seen to Lewis's trilemma came from a psychiatric nurse. His experience of working in an psychiatric hospital was that people with delusions, such as thinking they are Napoleon, didn't seem particularly off. They were pleasant, and easy to care for. Over the course of weeks, one would get to know them. It would gradually become apparent that the delusional thinking went very deep. They really did need residential care. So Lewis's rhetoric depends on "lunatic" connoting "raving lunatic" and there are actually four branches to his tri-lemma: liar, God, raving lunatic, some-one with serious psychiatric issues who generally holds it together and seems normal much of the time.
- goto11 6y ago
  My take on the trilemma is that Jesus never actually claimed to be God in the first place.
  - guide42 6y ago
    It didn't because declaring it was inconceivable in the Judeo view. But he might well understood he was God.
    - senderista 6y ago
      Claiming to be the Messiah is a long way from claiming to be God. There is good evidence Jesus claimed the former and not the latter (which wouldn’t even make sense to a first-century Jew).

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

The Abolition of Man, also by C. S. Lewis. Not explicitly Christian, it's a defense of classical ethics.

jenkstom 6y ago

I tried "Mere Christianity" at the urging of my mother. It was a series of logical fallacies one after the other. Although I will give him props, though, he tried to put a twist on most of them. Instead of a "false dilemma" it was a "false trilemma" and so on. It was still pretty silly.

mariodiana 6y ago

His Screwtape Letters are an excellent read.

jononomo 6y ago

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis is truly worth reading. Lewis's non-fiction is much better than his fiction, and his fiction is world-renowned. Mere Christianity is just so pure and clear.

ncmncm 6y ago

Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I chuck it in the trash. Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them. When White put out the second edition after Strunk died, he made up a bunch more rules, the went back and doctored Strunk's original text to follow his new rules. But he didn't check his own text. Typically he breaks his own rules on the same page where he is promoting them. The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." No, the books message is that there is a progression from undisciplined to rule-following to transcendent writing and you may be anywhere on that spectrum (though, if you are looking for a book on how to write, it's probably not deeply into the latter range), and that having the set of rules that the book presents available helps you move from the first to the second and prepare you to move to the third. In general, I think it's accurate enough. The rules it presents aren't the only set of rules that can do that, and there certainly is room for debate about their merits among competing alternatives.
combatentropy 6y ago
> its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing That's the opposite of its effect on me. > The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." I discerned no such put-down. > In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them. The gist of the book is the same as other books, such as The King's English, On Writing Well, and A Sense of Style. Stephen King praises the book in his own book, On Writing. I've also read a few articles on writing that say the same basic thing. The gist of these books is to write in service of the reader (as opposed to your ego) and to work hard at it (as opposed to being lazy and just "letting it all hang out" from the first draft), as it is a craft, like carpentry. Specifically, try to avoid wasting words, try to use the best word at each point, and try to order your words (and sentences and paragraphs) in the best way for the reader's understanding. There are some minor rules and preferences that perhaps Geoff Pullum is pouncing on, something like, "A clever horse is a good-natured one, not an ingenious one." I can see clearly that that is an archaism and take it for what it's worth. After all, the book is about 100 years old. But any writer should know that when you get down to that level of resolution, the detail shifts a bit in the quantum foam. Things on that level vary a bit from one decade to another, from one region to another. And language is like a craft, in that there are some rules that can be followed 90% of time, but it is not mathematics. You cannot distill a formula. I see Geoff Pullum taking it as black and white, but English does not submit to such simplification. Perhaps Strunk was more black and white, but White seems a bit looser, and I think their combination balances each other out nicely. It reminds me that no rule is absolute. However, for the vast majority of writers, they would benefit from at least trying to follow a lot of them! > The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White. For 80% of the writing I read in books, magazines, articles, etc., they suffer from the kinds of problems addressed in the Elements of Style. There may be other kinds of problems in a minority of writing, but far and away most writing suffers heavily from wordiness, vagueness, clumsy construction. I won't fault someone for incorrectly calling a horse "clever," but now I see why most writing tires me out so much --- and I can rewrite it in my head to be clearer.