When you look back on your time in lockdown, and consider all of the craziness we experienced together but apart, don't scroll endlessly through your 2020 messages, pull your Keepster book from the shelf!

When you look back on your time in lockdown, and consider all of the craziness we experienced together but apart, don't scroll endlessly through your 2020 messages, pull your Keepster book from the shelf!
As the latest instalment in the Bookstr Talks series, we hosted a timezone-crossing conversation with the hosts of the 'Call Your Girlfriend' podcast.
Long-distance BFFs, podcast co-hosts, and now authors, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman's new book shares just how important friendship is.
I know, I know. This is a super cheesy topic to write about, but hear me out: in a time like this, where we are required to distance ourselves from others, one comes to appreciate certain things a little more. We can most definitely stay in touch with people online and over the phone, and I would say that these are excellent ways to socialize.
All the same, a time like this also makes us realize how lucky we are to have these people in our lives. And while I can wax poetic about friendship, I think I’ll just let these poems do it for me.
Here are five poems about friends and friendship:
Tolkien and Lewis were both in residence at Oxford for many years, studying and teaching both. They were also close friends, even though they disagreed on almost everything. Sure, they had a shared interest in language, and in what we now call fantasy, but they disagreed on religion, and on the tones of their books. There are also a lot of stories about their friendship, few confirmed, but all amazing. Here are our favorites!
There’s a story that says Lewis specifically put the lamppost in Narnia because Tolkien said a good fantasy story would never have one. The sheer pettiness. What an icon. No fantasy story would have a lamppost? Well this one does! Please, TELL Lewis what his story can have. There’s no slowing him down. A lesson in spite we should really all take to heart.
Tolkien was, as well as being a linguist and historian, quite Catholic, and Lewis found his philosophical suggestions appealing, becoming religious himself. Tolkien didn’t get what he wanted, though, because though Lewis became more religious, he was Protestant, and Tolkien didn’t at all appreciate how much religion was in Lewis’ books. Kinda played himself.
Apparently when Lewis first read his draft of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to Tolkien and a croup of friends, Tolkien hated it. He thought it was terrible and combined too many mythologies. He wanted more consistent world building, and I don’t have a good source for this, but I’ve heard he even told Lewis to stop writing.
Featured image via J A Carlisle