A review by themauvereader
Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World by N.D. Wilson

emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.5

 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.