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book_beat 's review for:
Small Wonder
by Barbara Kingsolver
KINGSOLVER CRAFTS ESSAYS FROM DARKNESS TO SHOW LIGHT
Barbara Kingsolver wrote her 2003 "Small Wonder" essay collection in response to the 9/11 attacks and the political and social climate of the USA at the time. Although 15 years old, the essay topics are prolific and timely for today's reader.
Kingsolver's essays range from politics, plants, raising chickens, being a mother, having a mother, writing short stories, the death of a local bookstore, homelessness. In a favorite essay, "Stealing Apples," Kingsolver compares writing poetry to stealing an apple. She believes poems are there, fully formed, in everyday moments of life. They either fall and roll away or you grab them and jot them down. As she says, poems fall "from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory."
Her essays about reading, writing are extremely spunky and relatable for this avid reader. As she ponders, "With Middlemarch and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the world, a person should squander her reading time on fashionably ironic books about nothing much?"
Kingsolver talks a lot about the earth's resources and how her readers can live more purposefully and mindfully. She encourages readers to live with less and, as a result, live with an awareness of more.
These essays are uniquely Kingsolver, and any fan of hers will find fistfuls of gems in this collection.
"The stories were, for me, both a distraction and an anchor. Good fictional tales will always be my pleasure, my companionship, my salvation."
Barbara Kingsolver wrote her 2003 "Small Wonder" essay collection in response to the 9/11 attacks and the political and social climate of the USA at the time. Although 15 years old, the essay topics are prolific and timely for today's reader.
Kingsolver's essays range from politics, plants, raising chickens, being a mother, having a mother, writing short stories, the death of a local bookstore, homelessness. In a favorite essay, "Stealing Apples," Kingsolver compares writing poetry to stealing an apple. She believes poems are there, fully formed, in everyday moments of life. They either fall and roll away or you grab them and jot them down. As she says, poems fall "from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory."
Her essays about reading, writing are extremely spunky and relatable for this avid reader. As she ponders, "With Middlemarch and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the world, a person should squander her reading time on fashionably ironic books about nothing much?"
Kingsolver talks a lot about the earth's resources and how her readers can live more purposefully and mindfully. She encourages readers to live with less and, as a result, live with an awareness of more.
These essays are uniquely Kingsolver, and any fan of hers will find fistfuls of gems in this collection.
"The stories were, for me, both a distraction and an anchor. Good fictional tales will always be my pleasure, my companionship, my salvation."