Okay, so it's Christmas break now (yay! We all survived another round of finals!), and you're looking for a good book to read. You absolutely MUST read Gilead by Marilynne something-or-other. I absolutely loved it!! We read it as the last book in my American Novel class, so that we could end on something more uplifting. And it was definitely an uplifting book.
It's written as a letter from a 76 year-old preacher to his 7 year-old son. It's part advice on living, part memoir, and part journal as the preacher reflects on what happened in his life and what's happening right now in his life.
I don't know why, but it just touched me in a way no book has in awhile. Except maybe The Secret Life of Bees that I read this summer. I think that it's because neither book focuses on what's going wrong in society, but rather how people have created beauty in a hard situation. Throughout my American Novel class we discussed the question of why American literature (or any literature really) is so hard on society. And it's true that most "good" literature does point out the problems of society, but these two books made me aware of problems in society, while still making me filling good about life. They're not "light" reading, but it's so good.
1 comment:
Yay!!! It was good to hear from you again, even through your blog! How was your Christmas? Is your family still in town?
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