Consolations

Exquisite. I cherished this book for a few brief but intense months, opening it on random pages, sometimes reading sequentially but always slowly, always savoring. Whyte makes the quotidian new again, granting fresh perspectives on words and feelings we thought we knew.

I wanted to hold on to it longer; forever, maybe, to continue perusing and learning from. Each moment with it was different. But it was not mine to keep—is anything? It is now in the hands of someone who will, I know, adore it as well and possibly also let it go when appropriate. (I could buy my own copy. I won't: it somehow feels right to pass it on, even though it hurts too.)

With deep gratitude, on this International Women's Day, to the remarkable woman who introduced me to this book and allowed me to visit with it.

Four and a half stars.
This is a series of literary reflections very much in the tradition of Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, with the author and poet's musings on a series of words, packed tight with experiential wisdom.
While I didn't resonate will all the entries, I did find many excerpts profoundly resonant and meaningful. I felt particularly disconnected from the entries on places important to Christian history and the Western imagination - Rome and Istanbul, those places have their own meaning to me that was very different from the author's and I felt they didn't really fit in the compilation. They seemed a self-indulgent inclusion in which a tone of personal individual perspective contradicted the aspiring universalist tone of the other entries.
There are definitely some limitations to the author's traditional Western, Christian bias in these entries which prevents them reaching more transcendent knowledge or universal appeal and reveals the confines of the author's own perspectives a little plainly (he's no Gibran). But there is still some goodness and wisdom to be found as worthy food for personal reflection. The foreward by Maria Popova of Brainpickings fame, is gorgeously written.