The Pilgrim's Progress (1678 original; edició 1999)

Every Christian should read this. ( )

It's been a long time… better than I remembered. ( )

I listened to this on Audible.

This was a great book, a great narration, and a great allegory. I'm more familiar with the modern abridged versions so it was good to go back to Bunyan's original.

There were a couple things I found wanting though:
1. as a story, it could use some editing to tighten up the pacing. Particularly at the end, there was a lot of "discoursing" back and forth.
2. some of the discourses the pilgrims had, especially with the misguided/evil individuals they met, felt very preachy. I don't know if that's because it was how people back then told each other they were wrong, or whether as a minister, he felt it was better to get straight to the point to care for someone's soul. But it felt as if they didn't really "love" these people, possibly because Bunyan knew they were destined for Hell anyway. There could have been more friendliness in the disputes.

Besides that, I'd recommend reading it. Bunyan sprinkles in relevant biblical allusions all through it, from passing sentences to characters and places. And though occasionally his allegory falls back down to earth in a few places and uses our experiences without translating them, most of the time it depicts real things in the Christian life in a very graphic, useful way. ( )

00016038

Part 1 and Part 2 provide an interesting contrast.

I am often amazed to find major works written from a prison cell.
( )