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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
Maybe it's the preacher in me but, I have a feeling that this is a book I will re-visit again and again.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Such profound thoughts told with such sincerity and care that even when you couldn't care for religion- the protagonist is a reverend after all - or you are not a Christian yourself, you don't mind reading it all to take whatever strikes you the most. And many times, you are hit by feelings and a sense of wonder that baffles you. I am in awe of the writer and the way she has constructed the sentences: how she managed to weave such complex thoughts in mere simple words is beyond me.
At the heart of this book, there is love, care, longing for the years passed, and a fear of losing your loved ones: feelings that are universal for us all. The book really hits your heart.
I recommend this book to everyone.
At the heart of this book, there is love, care, longing for the years passed, and a fear of losing your loved ones: feelings that are universal for us all. The book really hits your heart.
I recommend this book to everyone.
emotional
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is one of those books one must have in their personal book collection , it will be a counsellor for life .
A few of the profound lines from the book that I had to write down ..
“One short sleep past ,wee wake eternally , And death shall be no more ;death, thou shalt die .”
John Donne
“Though I must say all this has given me a new glimpse of the ongoing ness of the world.We fly forgotten as a dream , leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for .”
“That is just the way of it , and it is remarkable
Young people from my own flock have come home with a copy of La Nausse or L’Immoraliste , flummoxed by the possibility of unbelief , when I must have told them a thousand times that unbelief is possible.
And they are attracted to it , by the very books that tell them what a mystery it is .And they want me to defend religion , and they want me to give them ‘proofs’. I just won’t do it .It only confirms them in their skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defence .”
“ This is how life goes -we send our children into the wilderness.Some of them on the day they are born , it seems , for all the help we can give them .Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves .But there must be angels there too, and springs of water .Even that wilderness , the very habitation of jackals , is the Lord’s.I need to bear this in mind .”
“ Strange are the uses of adversity .’That’s a fact.
When I’m up here in my study with the radio on and some old book in my hands and it’s night-time and the wind blows and the house creaks , I forget where Iam , and it’s as though I’m back in hard times for a minute or two , and there’s a sweetness in the experience which I don’t understand.But that only enhances the value of it .My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience.Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature .I remember my father down on his heels in the rain , water dripping from his hat , feeding me biscuit from his scorched hand, with that old blackened wreck of a church behind him and steam rising where the rain fell on the embers , the rain falling gusts and the woman singing ‘The Old rugged Cross’ while they saw to things , moving so gently , as if they were dancing to a hymn almost .”
A few of the profound lines from the book that I had to write down ..
“One short sleep past ,wee wake eternally , And death shall be no more ;death, thou shalt die .”
John Donne
“Though I must say all this has given me a new glimpse of the ongoing ness of the world.We fly forgotten as a dream , leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for .”
“That is just the way of it , and it is remarkable
Young people from my own flock have come home with a copy of La Nausse or L’Immoraliste , flummoxed by the possibility of unbelief , when I must have told them a thousand times that unbelief is possible.
And they are attracted to it , by the very books that tell them what a mystery it is .And they want me to defend religion , and they want me to give them ‘proofs’. I just won’t do it .It only confirms them in their skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defence .”
“ This is how life goes -we send our children into the wilderness.Some of them on the day they are born , it seems , for all the help we can give them .Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves .But there must be angels there too, and springs of water .Even that wilderness , the very habitation of jackals , is the Lord’s.I need to bear this in mind .”
“ Strange are the uses of adversity .’That’s a fact.
When I’m up here in my study with the radio on and some old book in my hands and it’s night-time and the wind blows and the house creaks , I forget where Iam , and it’s as though I’m back in hard times for a minute or two , and there’s a sweetness in the experience which I don’t understand.But that only enhances the value of it .My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience.Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature .I remember my father down on his heels in the rain , water dripping from his hat , feeding me biscuit from his scorched hand, with that old blackened wreck of a church behind him and steam rising where the rain fell on the embers , the rain falling gusts and the woman singing ‘The Old rugged Cross’ while they saw to things , moving so gently , as if they were dancing to a hymn almost .”
I feel like a terrible philistine, but I struggled mightily with Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. I do not demand action-packed, high-stakes stories in every book I read, but there has to be something to give shape to the text. Gilead lacks much in the way of story. The book consists of the ponderings of an old preacher addressed to his young son, but the narrator's beatific Christian perspective is cloying. He's not perfect, but he's aware of his foibles and apologizes for them constantly, which feels like a cheap way of getting around the character's flaws. The constant navel-gazing and self-flagellation and the "the Lord this, the Lord that" is just suffocating. And there comes a point in all of this old man's sitting in his study watching his son play, and writing this interminable letter, that you just want to yell at him to put his pen down and go spend some actual time with his son.
I did eventually finish the book, but I can't say I appreciated it at all. :( I am a little sad because Housekeeping is truly one of my favorite books, but at least this first installment of the Gilead series is not for me.
I did eventually finish the book, but I can't say I appreciated it at all. :( I am a little sad because Housekeeping is truly one of my favorite books, but at least this first installment of the Gilead series is not for me.
Beautiful. Radiant with a sense of the immanent sacred of life, as well as somehow very honest about the path of attempting a life of the spirit. Just enough story to frame some brilliant and eloquent reflections and to give the author somewhere else to go when those reflections begin to stray into preachiness. It might be an especially good book to read when you have time to go slow, or at least when you are able to have a somewhat contemplative frame of mind.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Ok yeah I can see why this got a Pulitzer. Just a beautiful, 250-page love letter from father to son, but also a heartfelt memoir. Trying to tell your child all you think they need to know about you, your family, the world before your life runs out? A crazy thought. I thought the Christianity of it all would overtake the plot for me but it did not, I liked this a lot once I got into the story and characters.