On my shelf this week:

The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis
The Book of Unknown Americans, by Cristina Henriquez
Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession, by Erma Bombeck

This week I’ve got an old classic from C.S. Lewis, a brand new (fantastic) novel and an old classic from a former humor columnist (I’ve checked out all her old stuff from the library and plan to read it all in the next few weeks.

Best quotes so far:

“Where Need-love is felt there may be reasons for denying or totally mortifying it; but not to feel it is in general the mark of the cold egoist. Since we do in reality need one another (‘it is not good for man to be alone’), then the failure of this need to appear as Need-love in consciousness—in other words, the illusory feeling that it is good for us to be alone—is a bad spiritual symptom; just as lack of appetite is a bad medical symptom because men do really need food.”
C.S. Lewis

“In the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing—for it ought to be growing—awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose.”
C.S. Lewis

Our Need-love for God is in a different position because our need of Him can never end either in this world or in any other. But our awareness of it can, and then the Need-love dies too.”
C.S. Lewis

“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”
C.S. Lewis

Read any of these? Tell us what you thought.

Or tell us what’s on your shelf.