I don't know how crisp this picture is going to come out, but anyway, the UW needs its book back. As soon as I finish Persepolis, I'm going to start AND FINISH this for real.:) 

I got this as a birthday gift from one of my friends at work, Mike. Actually I got the first one as my original birthday gift, but when he found out I'd already read it, he wonderfully went back to the bookstore and got me the second. I've got about 70 pages left.:) 

I can't believe it took me almost a month to read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. There were so many days spaced between each time that I picked up this book that in any other situation, I probably would have put it down in favor of another novel, in other words, given up. But, I made a pact with myself to read all of these books on both lists, regardless of how long it took. As, Keren says, it's all about the journey. My life this past month, excusably, has also been pretty much a shitstorm. I'd like to know what happened to my karma, I usually live a relatively decent life towards others, I bumble through life pretty simplistically...maybe, though, this is making up for the first year and a half in Seattle that was relatively drama free. Anyway, what a messy few weeks. A fabulous birthday with my love and my friends led to Keren's mirror getting sideswiped, less than a week later my car getting backed into by a garbage truck, an AMAZING Heart concert to a man harassing me and Keren on the bus(we were just holding hands, he stuck his middle finger up at us and yelled "Fucking Dykes!", this was after a crackhead approached us from out of nowhere while we were waiting for the bus). Then, my cats scratched Keren's face bad enough that we went to the emergency room, and the tetanus shot Keren received gave her a not so low grade fever for a few days. It's been eventful. What do I always say Kate? I attract catastrophe.:) So, all that to say, Gilead has taken a back burner to an afghan I've had to work on, and spending time with my girl. Though, I must say, I wasn't SOOOOO excited to read it that I couldn't put it down.:) I ended up really liking it by the end, a story of fathers and sons and true love, and living life simply not dramatic. It's about a very old preacher who is writing essentially a journal cum 247 page letter to his young son about his life, his best friend's family, and his present. I can't really describe too well how it made me feel, except that John Ames has a very pragmatic yet loving view of God and makes one think about how different believing in God is from believing in a religion. I normally love books that make me think about God and public outlook of her, but, the prose at times was slow...I need to read a truly blow-away book, I guess, one that sweeps me off my feet. It's been a while. I've definitely had a run lately of books where I say "This won the prize?" I'm sure especially with some of the novels I've got to come(Findley's The Wars comes to mind), I'll be saying it many times over. But, Robinson wrote some great prose too(I really do want to read Housekeeping now), and I have a few quotes that I liked(I save all these quotes to help me remember the novels when this whole project is done)..."But I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp. [new paragraph] Thank God for them all, of course, and for that strange interval, which was most of my life, when I read out of loneliness, and when bad company was better than no company. You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human, which I devoutly hope you will never have(Robinson 39). Also, John Ames writes to his son, "I realize that there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. Boughton and I have talked about that, too It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and the loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any (ibid 66). In regards to looking for proof of God, "I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment (ibid 179). And lastly, I loved this bit! "Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable--which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us (ibid 197). Bah...this book had so much that I was looking forward to, an insomniac preacher who is writing a long journal-like stream of consciousness(and we all know I'm serious when I say I was looking forward to this! I'm NOT JOKING!:), and overall it was pretty decent, though a bit slow...perhaps it could be my fault though, for letting the book become more of a coffee table element than food for my brain. But now I can say I'm happily, spiritually full...well at least for now.:) Pulitzers-18, GG's-20.