New Anne Lamott Book!

Normally, I get annoyed by the tailored electronic marketing these days.  Just because I buy everything in my life from Amazon does not give them the right to bombard my email with new suggestions.  It's way too Big Brother/End of the World for me.

But.

When they notified me that Anne Lamott had a new book coming out and oh by the way would I be interested in pre-ordering it, I whipped out the ole credit card and said YES!  Thank you, dear Amazon, for looking out for my interests!

Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott

I'll use a section from the beginning of the book to describe what it is about:

"It can be too sad here.  We so often lose our way.  It is easy to sense and embrace meaning when life is on track.  When there is a feeling of fullness - having love, goodness, family, work, maybe God as parts of life - it's easier to navigate around the sadness that you inevitably stumble across.  Life holds beauty, magic, and anguish.  Sometimes sorrow is unavoidable, even when your kids are little, when the marvels of your children, and your parental amazement, are all the meaning you need to sustain you, or when you have landed the job and salary for which you've always longed, or the mate.  And then the phone rings, the mail comes, or you turn on the TV.

Where do we even begin in the presence of evil or catastrophe - dead or deeply lost children, a young wife's melanoma, polar bears floating out to sea on scraps of ice?  What is the point of it all when we experience the vortex of interminable depression or, conversely, when we recognize that time is tearing past us like giddy greyhounds?  It's frightening and disorienting that time skates by so fast, and while it's not as bad as being embedded in the quicksand of loss, we're filled with dread each time we notice life hotfoot it out of town."

In her classic style (witty, sardonic, self-deprecating, realistic) Lamott describes the application of spiritual principles in small, every day ways.  Taking food to a new mom, sitting in silence with a grieving widow, making coffee filter art projects in Sunday School.  The book is - like her other "Christian" essays - down to earth and yet extremely spiritual.  This book came at a good time for me, which always serves to make a book more meaningful.

Compared to her other works, Stitches, in my opinion, is too short.  It feels truncated, like someone only bound the first couple of chapters instead of the whole book.  As eager as I am to read her latest works, it seems like she should have taken a bit more time and expanded this one, similar to her other memoirs and essay books.  I read this one in a day.  A work day.  It took me two hours, tops.  And that's just not enough.  I want more stories to support her Biblical points.  Her writing style is too good to tease us by releasing such short works.

That said, I don't have to give you the usual caveat in this book.  It's not offensive or over the top or filled to the brim with cuss words.  As far as Lamott books go, this one is mild salsa all the way.  No spice or bite to this one.  But there is plenty of humor and food for thought, and I do still recommend it. It would make a great stocking stuffer for a loved one next month!

Enjoy!