The Return

Review: A Different Kind of Happiness: Discovering the Joy That Comes from Sacrificial Love Dr. Larry Crabb Baker Books 2016 Who doesn’t want happiness, but what makes for our happiness?   Where do we find that happiness? Crabb tackles these questions head on in this book.   But, this is no afternoon read with a few pithy sayings to soothe your psyche.    The Dr. in the line with his name is that of clinical psychology which he practiced as a Christian counselor for a number of years.   He’s most likely to say he’s heard it all.   So this book goes a bit deeper than most.   A lot deeper than I had anticipated, in fact.    I found the book to be one that I had to put down and think about what I had read for a while before going on to the next chapter or even paragraph in some cases.   He has done much thinking about what he puts on the page.   Research too, but not just to have an impressive bibliography or set of ...

Review: The Gap of Time Jeanette Winterson Hogarth Shakespeare 2015 Another of the novelized retelling of a Shakespear's work from Hogarth.   This one comes from The Winter’s Tale in which Shakespeare depicted jealousy with its attendant emotions and consequences.   It’s been called a tragicomedy i.e. bad stuff happens, but it still ends happy.   The audiences then as now did not like unhappy, the bad guy wins endings.   Justice and repentance must prevail.   And it does.   That’s a spoiler, but one that should be no surprise.   Winterson worked her novelized version from the interior of the jealous husband’s mind.   She does that portrayal well.   The guy is disgusting and deserves to come to a bad end.   He doesn’t though, just as Shakespeare wrote his play.   Now comes the part Shakespeare did not do.   The language the author chose to use throughout a large portion of this work is as crass as it can get....

A review of a Nobel Prize winner?  No, but I will make a few comments about what I have read. First, I'd recommend reading the forward and his memories at the end of this collection before the rest. Helps to place him in geography , history, and his general reactions to specific points in his life.  Overall this collection reveals a very personal sort of poet.  By that I mean he seems to write from his own recollections and impressions just to express the experience in words.  He doesn't seem to attempt any commentary about politics or such like.  Second, all the technical stuff related to poetry like meter etc. is way beyond my knowledge level, but as a plain old reader I liked most of this collection.  It tended to the somber with little splashes of color here and there---generally as spring return to the countryside.  Have to wonder how much the climate affected his life and writing. Last, would I return to his writing?  Yes, that's one of ...

Review: The Shipping News E. Annie Proulx 1993 Charles Scribner’s Sons Proulx can write!!   At least as far as this book goes.   I've seen a few reviews that mentioned this one as a bunch of nowhere nobodies doing nothing essentially.   They are welcome to their opinions, but I couldn't disagree with them more strongly.   Those nobodies from nowhere have stories, lives, and are doing plenty that amounts to really living.   All the while the undertow constantly pulls against them.   Character development is the strongest I have read.   There's a touch of the mysterious all the way, and always a bit of suspense and uncertainty.     Always the feeling that more is being said than is being said.   Gives the reader the urge to think about this book and that, to me at least, makes this one to recommend to you.