I wanted to keep one Anthony Doerr book in reserve – I really enjoyed his books and his writing style, and it is good to have one more out there that you can break open if you are having a bad day\/week\/year. But talking with my mom about some of his other books she made me realize that I had in fact missed a book, so I read this (his first) to bring the remaining books back down to one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since this was his first novel I wasn\u2019t sure what to expect – was his writing always good or did it start out rough? Quickly I found that yep, it was always good. Something about the prose streaked with poetry makes it easy to read but also fires images in your mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I liked the slow pace of this book – it was sometimes hard to reel myself in and keep myself from speeding through it. But taking time pays off and we can really get a sense of the places that the characters visit. Places like St. Vincent, Alaska, and Cleveland. Three places I\u2019ve never been but I can almost taste the air and feel the vibes of each location. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story of this book starts with a hook – dreams of the future – but one thing that bothered me was that this linchpin for the plot fades away towards the middle and near the end. I think in his later books he hides more skillfully the elements that hold everything together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recently read the nonfiction book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that focused on nature – but About Grace also does a great job of writing about science and nature, in a completely different way. I\u2019m glad I was lucky enough to read these two books close together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next I am reading The Voyeur\u2019s Motel by Gay Talese. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wanted to keep one Anthony Doerr book in reserve – I really enjoyed his books and his writing style, and it is good to have one more out there that you can break open if you are having a bad day\/week\/year. But talking with my mom about some of his other books she made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-YR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}