The Bus on Thursday – 4/5 Stars This was an audiobook and I hadn’t heard of it before I looked a little into and downloaded it from Overdrive. Also, had this not been Australian I might not have listened to it, and had I read the back I wouldn’t either. I also almost turned it off early on because of a kind of off-key line that I didn’t like. But something clicked in my experience at some point and I ended up really liking it. […]
44: A mixed bag of essays
I’m fairly mixed on Marilynne Robinson’s novels. I hated Housekeeping, but loved Gilead. I liked Home and Lila okay, though neither got to the level of the first novel in the sequence. I had never read any of her nonfiction, but I couldn’t resist What Are We Doing Here? when I saw it in the library. I had read Robinson’s interview with President Obama and enjoyed it thoroughly, so I wanted to see how her newest nonfiction would go. Robinson writes on a huge variety […]
‘Gilead’ Is A Balm For Trump’s America
“This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.” Last week was a hard week for many of us. Facing the reality of Trump’s inauguration, I needed a book that was beautiful, calming, and familiar. As big as my stack of “to be read” books was, I needed something that I knew would give me temporary comfort. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson was really my only option. A favorite of President Obama’s (and a Pulitzer winner), Gilead tells the story […]
Not as transformative as its predecessor, but beautiful nonetheless
About a year ago, I picked up a stunning book that quickly became my go-to book recommendation. Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead was about an elderly, dying pastor. Desperate to leave something of himself behind to his young son, Reverend John Ames composed letter after letter to the boy, talking about his life, his insecurities, his love of family, his faith in God, and his unshakable belief that the world was a beautiful gift. Astonishingly written, Gilead was a meditation on what it meant […]