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A GR friend of mine, Kristen, wrote a review of this book that led me to read it. I'm about halfway through now and my attitude toward it (in terms of stars) has ranged from 2 to 5, settling for the moment at 4.As I mentioned in a comment under Kristen's review, I find Robinson's writing a bit dense. I consider this my fault, pretty much a consequence of my vocabulary and literary background being less robust than Robinson's. The obvious solution to this problem is for me to read the book with d...
"I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. This thesis may be influenced by the fact that I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of - who knows it better than I? - people who do not exist. And, just as writers are engrossed in the making of them, readers are profoundly moved and also influenced
This is that rare breed, a thoughtful book by a Christian writer; too often books by Christian writers turn into "Christian books," and lose the "thoughtful" part. As a woman of faith myself, I share most of her assumptions without necessarily sharing her conclusions; this makes her writing particularly challenging and thought-provoking. Also, Robinson regularly calls cultural assumptions, from several different "corners" of culture, into question. (One such assumption is that human beings are m...
I want to read this because apparently it's going to contain lines like these:"Say that we are a puff of warm breath in a very cold universe. By this kind of reckoning we are either immeasurably insignificant, or we are incalculably precious and interesting. I tend toward the second view. Scarcity is said to create value, after all."Sold!
There's no doubt that Robinson is bright, and thoughtful. And well-read. But sometimes I think when readers feel intimidated by an author's intellect, they say "Great! Amazing! Insightful!" with the hope that others will not notice how deeply confused they are. After all, if the reader is confused by something, and there are big words present in the text, that reader often feels deeply ashamed at not having "got it" and lays on the praise extra thick in hopes of not being asked to comment furthe...
Robinson now has three novels and four books of non-fiction to her name; she might end up as the E. M. Forster of the early twenty-first century (I consider that a great compliment). Thankfully this book of essays is a step up from Absence of Mind, although not quite up to the quality of Death of Adam. WIWACIRB, hereafter WIW, is a much easier read than DoA, but that's not necessarily a good thing- much of the pleasure of her first book of essays came from the prose, which did a nice job remindi...
As you can probably tell from the number of times I posted interesting thoughts from these essays, I loved this collection! I read Christopher Hitchens's God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and was disappointed, not because of what he was arguing, but by the lack of research he presented with his argument. He seemed to want to say, "I'm Christopher Hitchens and here's what I think ..." and that was that. Marilynne Robinson is polar opposite from Hitchens, not only in beliefs, but i...
I've read all of Robinson's fiction and am a huge fan, so when I saw this essay on audio--twenty minutes--I listened to it, and again, and again, as she is such a good writer, such a careful crafter of sentences, so thoughtful. I'll probably read the rest of it, as it is not writing that one can just breeze through. I was attracted to this essay by the title, the same title as the book itself, because this was true for me, too, but the essay is less about herself as young reader as it is about h...
Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, "Housekeeping", was published in 1980, and she has written two further novels: "Gilead", which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and Home, which won the Orange Prize in 2009. "Gilead" and "Home" contain many positive values, so "When I was a child I read books", a collection of essays, was met with anticipation and will likely arouse the interest of her readership.Robinson has the convinced written style of an essayist. She comments on present-day North American soci...
First a caveat -- my rating is based on the 8 of the 10 essays that I understood. The first -- Freedom of Thought -- I found the most challenging and will have to read it again in order to figure out what the point is. The last -- Cosmology -- did not hang together for me. I think I got the point -- that science has not replaced God in understanding human nature -- but would have to read it again to follow the argument. The other 8 essays I found very interesting and thought they provided much f...
My favorite of this collection of essays was "Freedom of Thought." It gave me a real interest in seeking out some ancient literature--a genre which has never before interested me. Virgil's Aeneid and the Epic of Gilgamesh, in particular, and maybe City of God...I'd like to read now. Creating a new curiosity is always a good thing. I respect Robinson's careful style---she has a very direct and absorbing feeling about her as a narrator. Just one of the many sections I enjoyed: "Religious experienc...
3 1/2, really, but it ranks this low because it was one of the weaker of Robinson's outstanding books in my very subjective view. Out of ten essays I loved 2 and liked 4 more, the other 4 were either so-so or uninteresting/weave-y. It's a collection of pieces exploring contemporary politics, religion, and thought about human nature and our place in the cosmos, with some asides about her background, writing, and teaching. She's definitely not satisfied with the status quo in today's politics, edu...
