Cover of When I Was a Child I Read Books

When I Was a Child I Read Books

Since the 1981 publication of Marilynne Robinson's novel, Housekeeping—a stunning debut that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize—she has built a sterling reputation not only as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. Her compelling and demanding collection The Death of Adam—in which she reflected on her Presbyterian upbringing, investigated the roots of Midwestern abolitionism, and mounted a memorable defense of Calvinism—is respected as a classic of the genre, praised by Doris Lessing as "a useful antidote to the increasingly crude and slogan-loving culture we inhabit."

Read more

In this new collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her work: the role of faith in modern life, the inadequacy of fact, the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as a modern rhetorical master.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 224 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked When I Was a Child I Read Books? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked When I Was a Child I Read Books. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays Shares essays, nonfiction, books about
  2. Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays Shares essays, nonfiction, essay
  3. The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays Shares essays, nonfiction, books about
  4. How to Be Alone Shares essays, nonfiction, memoir

“People who read When I Was a Child I Read Books tend to reach for these next.”

  1. My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
  2. For the Time Being
  3. Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere
  4. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“If you want more of the same (philosophy about religion), start with these.”

  1. Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
  2. Into the Looking-Glass Wood: Essays on Books, Reading, and the World
  3. Both Flesh and Not: Essays
  4. There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction

“If it was the essays that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
  2. The White Album
  3. Farther Away
  4. Pulphead

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. One Hundred and One Famous Poems: With a Prose Supplement
  2. God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens
  3. Writing and Difference
  4. The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: Essays on Poets and Poetry