I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers, by Tim Madigan. 3-1/2 stars.

Madigan shares some of the most trying times of his life and his most difficult hurdles to overcome, and celebrates the friend who was there with him through it all: Fred Rogers. unlikely as it seemed to him, a newspaper reporter who had never watched the Mister Rogers children’s show but who was sent to interview the icon, Tim and Fred bonded almost instantly and remained very close until Fred’s death in 2003. by honestly and openly telling of his marital problems, difficulties with his father, minor setbacks, the slow death of his brother to cancer- and how it affected him and how he, with Rogers as his mentor, made it through them all a better person, he touches on the deep common humanity in us all and gives us hope.

and in this way he continues the work of Fred Rogers. as one reviewer put it: Fred Rogers inspired people because he saw the good in them; he challenged people because he wanted them to see the good in themselves. even just reading about Rogers’ friendship with Madigan reinforces the idea that there is good in you, and that at least one someone out there somewhere knows that, and will believe in you no matter what happens.

the style is straightforward prose, much like one would expect from a newspaper article, but the story is moving and revealing as well.

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Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson: 5 stars

Housekeeping was a very haunting book. Gilead certainly seems haunting at times, and Robinson’s main character is leaving this life, which lends palpably to its ethereal quality. but Gilead seems more revealing and mature somehow, and, whereas I lent my copy of Housekeeping back out to the world, I’m keeping Gilead for a reread or two, right here on my shelf.

John Ames is a preacher who married young, but lost his wife and child young too. he remarried very late in life, and now he is 80 years old and dying, with a 7 year old son. this book is written as if a letter to that son, who otherwise will never know his father.

it tells about his [John Ames’] childhood, and his father the pacifist (who was also a preacher), his grandfather the radical abolitionist (who was a preacher as well), and his best friend (you guessed it- also a preacher)’s son, who was named John Ames in his honor and grew up to break the hearts of all who loved him. three wars are encompassed in this tale, as well as the Great Depression, the advent of television, and the ending of a way of life.

John Ames’ reflection on all of this, his personal struggles with all of this, and his all-encompassing joy and love of life, even with its terrible sufferings and inexplicable turnings, is highly original and ultimately universal at the same time.

Gilead is earthier and more hopeful really than Housekeeping, with greater insight (if possible), and evokes shades of Faulkner while written in that resounding poetic bliss that is Robinson’s style.

I have so many pages marked for quotes that I cannot possibly type them all out here, but opening the book randomly to one of those pages, this is what I will share:

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. 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, untransversable, and utterly vast spaces between us. (page 198)

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The Surgeon's Mate, by Patrick O'Brian: 5 stars

this is a novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series, which just gets better and better. I am trying so hard not to read them all in a row, as I can only read them for the first time once, and I will have the rest of my life to reread them in a row if I wish (and I bet I could do that forever). I’m trying to make the excitable tension of wondering what comes next last as long as possible, and O’Brian never fails me.

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since last entry I have read Watership Down, The Surgeon's Mate, Gilead, and I'm Proud of You.

Watership Down: 5 stars

honestly, I put off reading this for a long time. not outright, but I always had other books higher in the to-read pile. that and somebody once told me that they had to read it for school and absolutely hated it; but there is no way they were talking about this book. and I wonder how much attention they were paying in school, as I went back and asked someone else in the class, and they said the book they had read was Animal Farm!

I did not know what the book was about, except that it had to do with rabbits, and perhaps a boat. there is a boat, of sorts I guess, but that’s not where the “Ship” in the title comes from. for moon-calf Americans like myself, I will explain that Watership Down is a place name. it’s a hill.

so the book is about rabbits on a hill? well, yes, but no, of course not. honestly this is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I immediately went out and ordered it in hardcover as I know I will be rereading it at least once every two years for the rest of my life. that’s how amazing it is. so, no, not just rabbits on a hill.

and the rabbits are not Disney rabbits, or Lewis Carrol rabbits, wearing waistcoats and top hats or helping a princess with the household chores. Adams, with fantastic storytelling, weaves you into the world of real rabbits in a delightful, astonishing, and sometimes quite harrowing way. oh, if you only know rabbits to be fluffy little poopsies, you can think again. and you might not feel so comfortable wearing bunny slippers after this, either!

this book is an adventure unlike anything I was expecting. I was laughing; I was on the edge of the bed with my eyes wide open; I was even crying, and it takes one hell of a story to make me cry. I was practically blissful at the end of the book, even though it was over.

yay, Watership Down :D

I'd give it 7 stars, but my rating system only goes up to 5.