Orthodoxy (1908) (edit title/settings)

• Rated 1 stars

“I thought it to be a very hard read because it is written in a very specific time and frame of reference that if you do not share you miss a lot of what he is trying to convey ”

• Rated 5 stars

“Brilliant”

• Rated 5 stars

“The title sounds boring. It isn't. One of G.K. Chesterton's most lasting achievements, and a great antidote to sloppy or lazy thinking about Christianity. As Lyle Dorsett says it, plainly and simply: “A stunningly brilliant book written by one of the literary giants of the early twentieth century.” Every page contains a quotable passage, like this: “As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist . . . and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding.” Anything by Chesterton is worth reading, but other obvious classics that come immediately to mind are his Everlasting Man and his biographies of Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas.”

• Rated 4 stars

“A thoughtful and fascinating account of the author's move from agnosticism, in his teens, through to a profound faith in God, and subsequent adoption of the Christian faith.

GK Chesterton uses analogies to good effect, and describes his gradual search for meaning in life, looking at objections to God posed by atheists, and - one at a time - realising that they were all based on fallacy.

It took me several weeks to read this book; some of it was a bit long-winded, and there was much to ponder. I found his thought processes a bit convoluted in places, yet reassuring and often refreshing.

He wrote the book, apparently, to answer his critics... and in doing so produced an excellent apologetic for his beliefs. Recommended to anyone who is happy with a somewhat lengthy - and, inevitably, dated - discussion of faith from a fully rational and logical standpoint .”

• Rated 5 stars

“Full of humor and levity and paradoxes in the style of the late and great Gilbert Keith Chesterton. I believe he effectively defends religious orthodoxy (mind this was 13 years before his own conversion to Catholicism) and shows that ardent relativists and skeptics hold to a strict orthodoxy of non-orthodoxy on their own. The best image I remember is that of comparing orthodoxy to a fence on a high plateau. Just as the fence does not harm our freedom to fall, or in other words acts to keep us from falling to our deaths, so does an adherence to an orthodox religion and morality keep the person from error and insanity. ”

• Rated 3 stars

“Chesterton's personal argument for Christianity, full of his characteristic wit and good cheer. It's a personal account of the intellectual process that led to his conversion, very much along the lines of C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, which it inspired (along with Lewis' own conversion). Its arguments are somehow not as compelling as Lewis', and yet they're more charming, the most charming of which are Chesteron's unapologetic conviction that we live in a world of literal magic -- a "fairyland" of the supernatural -- and that what is consistently overlooked by unbelievers is that God, amongst other things, is a God of Mirth. ”

• Rated 5 stars

“So good. I adore Chesterton's mind. He speaks a language my soul gets. ”

• Rated 4 stars

“The conversational tone seems a little juxtaposed to the epic observations and keen insights. But keen they are, and leave me wanting a bit more development of each topic. The advantage is that it is a quick read, keeps moving.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Mind-blowing. Witty. The story of how Mr. Chesterton came to the Christian Faith.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Chesterton says right in the beginning that he did not intend this to be a book of Christian apologetics, but an answer to the problem of what men should believe in, once they admit the premise that it simply does not do to believe in oneself. This book is smart, enlightening and humorous all at the same time, and filled with clever and prescient observations that seem as if they were written just today.

Not a difficult read, and highly recommended.”