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375 reviews for:
For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World
Sasha Sagan
4.11 AVERAGE
375 reviews for:
For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World
Sasha Sagan
4.11 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
fast-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
It was such a sweet book. I don’t consider myself very religious and I feel like that’s what made me able to relate/have an open mind about the topics she touched upon. I don’t have enough rituals within my own life do to not affiliate myself with the religion I was raised in, but I still missed the community. I felt that sense of community through this book. I felt at home with her words. Felt fortunate to have stumbled upon this book and gave it a chance. I definitely recommend this book for the more spiritual sort that want to go on a little journey filled with traditions.
I learned about FOR SMALL CREATURES SUCH AS WE from a GoodReads Giveaway and I’m glad I did. Though I didn’t win, I was genuinely interested in the book and sought it out from my local library. I found it incredibly warm, intellectually rewarding, and as a fan of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan it is an interesting view into what life was like living with them, and more generally what life is like for a person nominally connected with celebrity. Some sections of the book held my interest more than others, but overall I found it wonderfully charming. I was compelled to read several passages over again because of how lovely or moving I found them, and I felt the need to read pages aloud to my wife more than once.
The book is a mix of several different things. One of its primary purposes is as a set of suggestions about how to raise children, or how to approach life as an adult in fact, from a secular perspective. A lot of this is explaining the life philosophy Sagan was taught by her parents, and truthfully much of it was how I live my life already but Sagan puts the ideas to words and highlights the benefit of celebrating each moment in life. The second aspect of the book is more educational—a survey of the beliefs and rituals of various religions and cultures, how they relate to one another, and what is the ultimate cosmological or biological event that truly underlies it. Third, it’s a love letter of sorts to her parents and to her husband: Sagan’s deep love and appreciation for each of them shines through the work. Last, it’s a sort of autobiography.
This last element I found especially interesting. Where most people might have a few memories and photographs of a father who died before the turn of the century, Sagan is bombarded with her father’s image and voice all of the time. She has his writing, as well, which she can read in his voice. She talks about being able to find interviews online that he did while she was a baby yet which she’s never seen before. She talks about searching the Library of Congress for additional information about him. And she talks about having to relive his death a little bit each time some stranger recognizes her name, speaks effusively about Carl, and then unthinkingly asks her to “let him know how much I appreciate his work”. She has to re-announce his death again and again. What a way to spend a life.
The philosophical bits, too, were especially gratifying. Sagan speaks so openly about her nonbelief and the ways she nevertheless manages to find awe and wonder in the world without a deity to lay it all at the feet of—in fact, she finds the world far, far more inspiring without one. She does acknowledge times she’s felt left out of the rituals others engage in, or times when the seeming coldness of the universe got her down, but these are highly relatable struggles that anybody living without religion has experienced. “Struggles” is maybe even too strong a word—just the normal process of finding meaning in a world that doesn’t define itself for you.
The themes of the book center on thankfulness, curiosity, and willingness to admit error and to change. More than that: knowing that being wrong is a step toward greater knowledge, a more fruitful and meaningful existence. It all makes for a humanistic, sweet, charming book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The book is a mix of several different things. One of its primary purposes is as a set of suggestions about how to raise children, or how to approach life as an adult in fact, from a secular perspective. A lot of this is explaining the life philosophy Sagan was taught by her parents, and truthfully much of it was how I live my life already but Sagan puts the ideas to words and highlights the benefit of celebrating each moment in life. The second aspect of the book is more educational—a survey of the beliefs and rituals of various religions and cultures, how they relate to one another, and what is the ultimate cosmological or biological event that truly underlies it. Third, it’s a love letter of sorts to her parents and to her husband: Sagan’s deep love and appreciation for each of them shines through the work. Last, it’s a sort of autobiography.
This last element I found especially interesting. Where most people might have a few memories and photographs of a father who died before the turn of the century, Sagan is bombarded with her father’s image and voice all of the time. She has his writing, as well, which she can read in his voice. She talks about being able to find interviews online that he did while she was a baby yet which she’s never seen before. She talks about searching the Library of Congress for additional information about him. And she talks about having to relive his death a little bit each time some stranger recognizes her name, speaks effusively about Carl, and then unthinkingly asks her to “let him know how much I appreciate his work”. She has to re-announce his death again and again. What a way to spend a life.
The philosophical bits, too, were especially gratifying. Sagan speaks so openly about her nonbelief and the ways she nevertheless manages to find awe and wonder in the world without a deity to lay it all at the feet of—in fact, she finds the world far, far more inspiring without one. She does acknowledge times she’s felt left out of the rituals others engage in, or times when the seeming coldness of the universe got her down, but these are highly relatable struggles that anybody living without religion has experienced. “Struggles” is maybe even too strong a word—just the normal process of finding meaning in a world that doesn’t define itself for you.
The themes of the book center on thankfulness, curiosity, and willingness to admit error and to change. More than that: knowing that being wrong is a step toward greater knowledge, a more fruitful and meaningful existence. It all makes for a humanistic, sweet, charming book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
This book was not what I expected from the subtitle. It's closest to a memoir, I suppose, but with a lot more discussion of anthropology than most. I was really looking forward to what I thought this book was about, so I was mildly disappointed, but luckily I still found the memoir interesting.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
I got out of the groove with this one. Sagan's voice is a tad grating and the content wasn't interesting enough. I expected a deeper anthropological view of rituals and the text was very anecdotal and didn't really teach me anything new.
emotional
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
I really liked For Small Creatures Such as We. I liked thinking about why we do things, traditions and daily rituals, and I also liked the blend of her life story. I did think that it would be more secular than religious, so I was slightly shocked by all the references to different religions. It bothered me that while she kept making connections to religions, she didn't do a deep dive into them and point out the bad things, like for example, she pointed out a lot of churches teach about feeding the hungry and require volunteer/charity work or fasting. While Jesus did preach about feeding the hungry, here in the U.S. at least, we have laws being passed that are very anti-Christian and those who are championing for these laws are most likely to be Christian themselves. So that bothered me as someone who was raised religious and lost their faith due to the inconsistences of what the Bible says, vs what the Churches actually preach. And while I did appreciate her having an open mind about religions, I don't understand why she doesn't have the same open-mindedness towards astrology. Both are beliefs, so why respect one over the other? I don't know, it just rubbed me the wrong way, so it did affect my enjoyment of the book, but overall, I did like it and thought it was very reflective. It made me want to incorporate more rituals or traditions into my life.
A real page-turner. Sasha Sagan inherited her parents' talents in writing as well as their curiosity and inquisitiveness. If Carl Sagan was still alive when this book came out, I am sure he would've been very proud of his daughter's work.