I am not trying to read this (yet again) I've made it further this time than I ever have before, but for whatever reason, I still find it really hard to read. Maybe it is just the old-fashioned writing, but whenever I try to read it, I eventually get to the point where I realize that I am not paying attention at all to anything I am reading, it is all going in one ear and out the other.

Has anyone read this one?

Yes.

I suspected as much. I vaguely recall having tried and not having gotten far.

It was around 1965, as I was starting my Lewis/Chesterton/Tolkien affairs, and also much related fantasy literature (Eddison, Morris, such like archaic language users), on into the Ballentine Adult Fantasy series (at the Sign of the Unicorn) and lots of others I've completely forgotten, and hope to find the books again someday, wherever they are in my crypts. I plowed on, faithfully, but rarely looked back.

I finished this book today, finally, I don't know what to make of it, and I'm absolutely certain that I didn't understand it. My sole interest in this title is that CS Lewis absolutely loved it, but I don't understand why apparently he saw something in it that I cannot.

I find it an extremely difficult book to read, I got about 2/3 of the way through it, and then realized that I had no idea what was going on and started over.

I still don't really understand it.

Usually, when I have difficulty understanding a book the first time I read one more time and it makes sense, this is the way it usually is with Dostoyevsky, the first time it is a mystery, the second time it makes sense. Phantastes I may have to read at least three times before I finally understand it.