A few years ago a friend recommended this book. I fell in love with the writing of Anne Lamott. Somehow the complicated business of being messed up and finding faith, a faith in Jesus, seems fresh, vibrant and approachable through her honest voice and wry self-loathing. How does she do that? ( )

Some interesting thoughts and ideas in here, but they are usually buried in her relentless attempts at humor. I know a lot of people find her hilarious, but I just felt exhausted by her jokes. ( )

I read Traveling Mercies, chapter-by-chapter, with my mom. We have both been dealing with different forms of grief, and have found this book to be so helpful. We always had much to talk about and have learned so much about each other over the last few months. Even if you don’t agree with Lamott’s views on faith, this book is highly recommended - especially to read with a partner. ( )

I enjoyed this quirky, well-written account of the author's forays into faith. Told in a semi-autobiographical style, in conversational tone, starting with her free-range childhood in California.

Fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals would probably object to some of the author's lifestyle, past and present, and her fairly liberal, relaxed theology. But I thought her ideas were interesting, I appreciated her extreme honesty, and found some of her insecurities and observations poignant.

Recommended.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2023/03/traveling-mercies-by-anne-lamott.ht... ( )

I try to make my reviews little essays, and not like ad copy or verbal abuse, but not all of them are necessarily good. (Obviously if I knew which ones weren’t I’d take them down.) The first time I reviewed this book it was very teacher’s pet/class mascot kinda way, not like my own style as it’s developed (this was April 2020 I think), personal if committed, but just kinda fake like the majority of academics are, in a way, fake (like the majority of people are out to lunch completely…. “You know, ever since Reagan, it’s gotten a lot harder to be a poor person in America.” “Yeah.” *beat* “You know what I really need to get is, one of those really nice cheesesteaks from Guido’s….” No attempt to justify the apolitical, no rebellion, no real loyalty, just…. Wow, what a fluke, engaging with life. Let’s pretend that didn’t happen.)

And I was fake. I even mentioned the Big Name that first mentioned Anne to me, and plotted paragraphs, the whole thing. Luckily, only the Stasi can still access That review, lol.

I don’t know. I suppose the thing for me that’s important about Anne is that she’s not unlike my mom, you know, although she’s a version of my mom that has a slight infusion of my dad’s normality (though not to his near-criminal degree)—America, Christianity, being vaguely popular and accessible, and not always pretending to be wise, exotic, esoteric, more foreign than you really are. You know. But there are similarities: the natures of being alcoholic/prodigal, codependent/mommy cult, child trauma from traumatized parents, spiritual thoughts. Although I guess it’s different because my parents are both spiritual, in ways they make essentially antagonistic, and their parents were all conformist Catholics I guess, and Anne was raised by atheists and feels drawn to many different strands of spirituality, which she ultimately does not view as being fundamentally antagonistic….

I don’t want to exaggerate, but we’re usually drawn to people who are like people we know, usually our parents, right. And Anne is a good writer, in own way, her own kind of observational comedy kind of way, used for spiritual purposes. (By comedy I mean someone much broader than B movie comedy, you know. It’s basically drawing truth out of the little things.)

…. Although I have to say: the first time I read/reviewed, I thought it was a little hard to talk about, but I didn’t feel that I didn’t understand it. Now it’s more, that I’ve learned from it, but I also understand that I do not really know it that well.

…. Along a similar vein—it’s certainly not bad writing; it’s good; it’s not like, I don’t know, it’s easy even for girls and certainly for guys to trash girl’s writing, when it’s discernibly girl’s writing, especially, you know. Like it’s gotta be, I don’t know—I’m so deluded, everything’s great and everyone’s in love, and weird people are terrible because, really, ARE there weird people, really! I think it’s just you; I’m so pretty! Anne isn’t like THAT, you know; she really isn’t. And yet her writing is essentially women’s writing—letting go of thoughts about the Other Mother as forgiveness, instead of forgiveness being political and abstract, even when she Does have politics, even politics different from the Other Mother, you know. But I don’t know. I mean, I don’t experience Anne’s life since I’m not a mother or a woman or even very social or connected or anything, (the period I read People magazine and watched lots of movies was the worst time in my life; I’m starting to watch a few movies recently, but I don’t look up film person references the way I look up book references, you know, and even when I do half the time I don’t get it; the encyclopedists don’t have that physical intelligence, and neither do I, so), so I don’t know….

I guess that because of gender even people we share national religious and political culture with can kind of be an experience with the other with, you know, even when we’d like to not have that otherness there.

…. But since I can still see that it’s great, you can put me down as her Influential Male Supporter, her kind, generous overlord who only desires her sincere gratitude and unpaid service. 🤓🥸😁

…. …. Special note: Evangelical and liturgical are different things, but it is of course more of a spectrum than a binary thing, and even one that cannot be plotted out perfectly on some sort of graph, you know. Specifically, for Anne, who goes to a Presbyterian church, I have decided to place some of her books in the contemporary liturgical Protestant category and others in the liberal evangelical group, since I cannot make a definite rule for the Presbyterians. On the one hand, they’re not quite Methodist IMO, and so not Baptist/Methodist, evangelical, but also not Anglican/Lutheran, lit Prots.

What are you going to do to me now, right? Huh, academics? 🤯