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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
medium-paced
This is a wonderful collection of letters written to people with whom the authors had chance encounters or special brief connections. I especially like the one written by the poet Kiki Petrosino about the time after her graduation when she lived with her grandmother.
reflective
medium-paced
slow-paced
adventurous
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
reflective
slow-paced
I didn't love it but felt like I should finish it. Occasional flashes of connection, but overall not for me.
There are a lot of very good lines in this book but also a lot of essays that didn’t make me feel anything. Tracing motherhood and womanhood through all the different lenses was interesting.
My favorite three essays in page order were:
To the Father Paused Under the Tree
To the Boy Who Climbed onto My Hammock
To the Boo Radley of My Childhood
My favorite three essays in page order were:
To the Father Paused Under the Tree
To the Boy Who Climbed onto My Hammock
To the Boo Radley of My Childhood
I liked the idea of these letters. I got through about half of them before I moved on to other things
This book is a collection of essays about the chance encounters and brief meetings that leave a lasting mark. A few felt flat or forgettable, but on the whole I was impressed with the quality of the writing and the explorations of why some people stick with us for years, even when we never really knew them.
Inevitably, I thought of some of my own strangers, like the customer who lifted an ice bucket for me during a terrible restaurant shift, or the woman with two small children who waited with me after I'd run off the road in the ice, or the man who called the insurance company where I worked at 9:30 in the morning, drunk and saying he was going to kill himself because he was in love with a married woman. I have wondered many times who those people (and others) were and what became of them, so this collection resonated with me.
Letter to a Stranger is a nudge to notice our interconnectedness, for good or for ill, and to find the value in our interactions with one another, whether the lesson is kindness or strength or community or pain. I'll probably read this again in the future.
Inevitably, I thought of some of my own strangers, like the customer who lifted an ice bucket for me during a terrible restaurant shift, or the woman with two small children who waited with me after I'd run off the road in the ice, or the man who called the insurance company where I worked at 9:30 in the morning, drunk and saying he was going to kill himself because he was in love with a married woman. I have wondered many times who those people (and others) were and what became of them, so this collection resonated with me.
Letter to a Stranger is a nudge to notice our interconnectedness, for good or for ill, and to find the value in our interactions with one another, whether the lesson is kindness or strength or community or pain. I'll probably read this again in the future.