One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp


Janelle got this book for her birthday from her sister and voraciously devoured it. Then she recommended it to me: You should read this! You'll love it.

So, I have to admit, I was turned off at first when I read the jacket: "Ann Voskamp is a writer with DaySpring (a division of Hallmark)..." I wasn't super keen on reading a book by a card writer about how wonderful life is and all about rainbows and cinnamon farts.

So I read it anyway and I liked it from the very start. The book is a biographical look at how gratitude, thankfulness, can change a life. In it, Ann Voskamp gives a cross section of her life and chronicles how being thankful erases bitterness, makes her kinder, more willing to forgive. It starts when she decides to make a list of all the things she is grateful for, and as she looks for things she is grateful for, she finds all the things that she should have been thankful for but, all this time, took for granted. Her list unlocked a life full of gifts.

What I liked


The writing was poetic and flowing. Here are a few examples:

"When children sleep under the scraps stitched into quilts and the clock ticks too loudly through the dark hours and the spiral galaxies spin in space, I lie under the afghan by the fire and read the words of an old sermon." (p. 33)

"I want the hunt, the long sleuth, the careful piecing together. To learn how to be grateful and happy, whether hands full or hands empty." (p. 47)

"The moon rounds immense, incandescent globe grazing ours. Her gravity pulls, pearl filling deepening sky, stringing me unto the universe." (p. 105)

So you can see she writes well, she plays with words, turning adjectives into verbs and verbs into nouns, and nouns into adjectives. I like that. It makes for a rich and enjoyable read.

Also, the book is intellectual and deals well with some heavy issues like theology and philosophy. It's also not all about happiness and rainbows and magic, but it wrestles with difficult questions like, why do children die if God is good?

My favourite chapters were the ones where she writes about her family and her children. In one, older-son throws toast in younger-son's face and that turns into a discussion about how thankfulness can bring kindness and dissolve bitterness.

What I didn't like


There were parts, like in one chapter where she runs out into the farm field with her camera to take photos of the moon and she spends the whole chapter out there talking about how thankful she is for how beautiful the moon is. It just seemed a little dumb to me, but Janelle says that's just me.

Conclusion


I heartily recommend this book! Enough said. 4/5 dead little sisters.