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4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
Just ok. I didn't get a lot of the rave reviews for this one. I read the follow up work to this, "Death by Living" first, and I found it more thoughtful and on track. If Death by Living was a bit too flowery, this one was much too flowery. I did feel like I was on a Tilt-A-Whirl at times, ready to get off.
This book is poetry and philosophy. It’s weird and thoughtful and wonderful. I absolutely loved it.
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
I love this book so much. This was at least my fourth time through- it’s the one I reach for when I’m grieving and feel like the world is cracking apart beneath me. Pretty soon the entire book will be highlighted since new things strike me fresh each time.
Poetic, witty, and insightful! I laughed, I awed, I was made to really think, I got lost on the tilt-a-whirl, I found myself again, and in the end, I enjoyed the ride. The author calls us to think about the world differently. To see it all as God's story unfolding and ALL beautiful. There is no accident and God is an artist.
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
I found it profound while also being imaginative and down-to-earth. It’s a book that’s hard to describe but also easy. It’s a wondering book, but also a telling book. I say it wonders because Wilson asks questions and then answers them, but not in the way you’d expect:
“What is the world? What is it for?
It is art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Fabergé egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fulfillment, a desert, a dessert, an ocean, a leap, a quest, a fall, a climb, a tree, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched. (pg. 83)
It reads like a journal. It is almost stream-of-consciousness, but it is coherent in that Wilson seizes the narrative in this tilting and whirling existence, and he shows how it is threaded through the various enigmas that are reality on this planet Earth. I like the subtitle: “Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World.” Wilson brings a magnifying glass up close to the ugly and the beautiful alike and sees the creator’s fingerprints in it all. I came away with a renewed sense of appreciation for the struggle and for the triumphs of this thing called life.
This is a fascinating and unusual book. The best I can describe it as poetry written as prose, at least that's how I was thinking of it as I wrote it. Very lyrical, allegorical, whimsical, with random observations and asides thrown in somewhat stream-of-consciousness. I'm sure it's a style that you either love or hate, but after getting used to it, I was impressed by it. As much as it sounds like a jumbled mess from how I'm describing it, it does have a definite structure to it, and makes it's points very effectively, if in an unorthodox manner. It definitely changed the way I think about life and God and the world around me, and I very much appreciate the insights he shares in this book, far more than I expected.
I just really enjoyed this book. I thought it was a unique idea to combine artistic writing and theology in such a way that the reader is lead to praise the Creator of this Tilt-A-Whirl we all live on.
I like the sentiment and the overarching theme, but his particular brand of poetic writing isn't to my taste.