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Sep 15, 2007

Aileen rated it:

I bought this book the day before I had a late-night conversation with life-time friends about religion, and heritage, rational thought vs "faith," and personal responsibility. I learned a lot from that conversation. Indeed, I think I keep learning from it. Perhaps reading this book prolonged those lessions. At the very least, it kept alive in my own mind the debate. Can a rational, free-thinking, independent person have religious faith? Is there any good in organized religion? More...

1 comment like (14 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2008

Jocelynlt rated it:

I flat-out love this book. It's probably my favourite book ever, certainly my favourite book on faith and spirituality. Annie Lamott earned her place as my very favourite Author and person-I-want-to-be-like-when-I-grow-up with this book. It's a "spiritual memoir" of sorts, written by a funny, idealistic, liberal, reformed imperfect prophetess alcoholic. This book has perhaps the best description of God I've ever read - God as cat at the door. We are all glad Annie invited him in.
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Nov 05, 2007

Susan rated it:

Anne Lamott is a person who has lived a lot of life and managed to come through the other side. Thanks to her good sense (and good sense of humor) this book is not so much a victim-y detailing of her descent and recovery, as much as it is a compelling story of how she began to catch glimpses of grace in everyday living. To this end, she offers a series of short vignettes on various topics including hair, beauty, illness, kids, family relationships, politics, music, drugs, eating, sex, etc. All More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 18, 2007

Heather rated it:

if I were in the position of Saint Peter, I don't know if Anne Lamott would make it through the Pearly Gates. But I'm not, so I absolutely loved this book that tickled my funny bone and stabbed my heart. The account of her conversion was powerful and hilarious: "Fuck it. I quit. All right, Jesus, You can come in." After being at Mount Level, her descriptions of Saint Andrew resonate deeply with me. I adored her descriptions of her friends as unrelentingly beautiful. Indeed, her capacit More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Kate rated it:

A great writer, whether you like the terrain or not.

I have not read any of her other books, but I am a big fan of this one. It is humourous and dear, ripe with blasphemy and deep spirituality all at once, which is just how i like it.

Anne Lamott writes about life and christianity with very real and human eyes. She is blunt but tender in her thoughts, highly educated and yet unafraid to show sentimentality. She is a bundle of extremes that work together beautifully with all More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 15, 2010

Liz rated it:

My mother in law gave me this book for Christmas-- it's one of her favorite books. I have to say after finishing it, it just made me love her even more.

I especially enjoyed reading this book as a woman of faith myself. At first glance (or rather, through the first several chapters) it was too easy to say that my faith was very different than hers, and that my own experiences fell at the opposite end of the (faith?)spectrum. However, by the end, it was clear that there wasn't that More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Erin rated it:

I'm having a hard time identifying why I didn't really enjoy this book. Many of the stories and the related "morals" resonated with me and the author presents them in a very palatable form which is surprising to me given the strong christian current running throughout the book. But yet, I did not look forward to picking this up and found myself reading it just to get it over with.

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 15, 2009

Megan rated it:

Anne Lamott writes sharp, funny, clever prose -- another of her books, _Bird by Bird_, really does give wonderful advice on writing and is how I was initially introduced to her. This book is a number of essays on a variety of issues -- getting older, handicapped people, what you can learn when you hurt yourself on a ski slope. She can be quite smart and very cute. But although she has a "love everyone" approach and is all about forgiving and laughing through life's brokenness and hu More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 03, 2007

Jeannine rated it:

I have some mixed feelings about this book. I don't really know how to express them clearly, so just let me know if you want a more detailed explanation!

Reading Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz gave me some clarity as to why I didn't like Traveling Mercies. On the back of Blue Like Jazz, a commentary compares Miller and Lamott, but I completely disagree with that comparison. Before becoming Christians, both had very strong adversions to Christianity and yet both decided to give More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jun 26, 2007

Michele rated it:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

These are the last three sentences of the book, "Traveling Mercies" by Anne Lemott. And they sum up this collection of stories beautifully. This is a book about faith and a book about gratitude. It is intelligent, thought provoking, funny and highly readable. Anne Lemott, Annie--as it appears her friends call her--lets us into her world and shares a very personal and poignant path of a unique and awkward girl taking off her "glasses More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2011

Lauren rated it:

This book is officially on my all-time favorites list. Anne Lamott shares her hilariously funny and at times deeply moving perspective on God and her relationship with Him in a way that makes me want to immediately drop what I'm doing and take my daughter to church. I think that everyone can identify with at least one of her struggles, which range from alcoholism to the shape of her thighs.

Her imperfections, to me, make her that much more lovable. I was completely absorbed in her More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 11, 2011

Lisa added it

I like, "in the Christian experience of baptism, the hope is that when you go under and you come out, maybe a little disoriented, you haven't dragged the old day along behind you. The hope, the belief, is that a new day is upon you now." I don't like, "You don't want to die when you're this upset --you get a bad room in heaven with the other hysterics, the right-to-lifers, and the exercise compulsives." I am really troubled by "I wouldn't put anything past God, becaus More...

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Apr 25, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

The book is not about your conventional spiritual journey because Anne Lamott is anything but conventional. She writes with a directness and honesty that makes this book intense and involving but also very funny. She grew up in an unconventional family and struggled with drugs, alcohol, and eating disorders before realizing that she might not live much longer if she continued on that path. In addition, she found herself pregnant and single. If there is ever a time when you need a spiritual awake More...

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Oct 15, 2011

James rated it:

I was hoping to like this book, but I couldn't. Now, as I write this review, I'm becoming more sympathetic than I was while reading it, but not so much that I'd recommend reading the book.

Going in, I thought that I was right in the target audience for Traveling Mercies (liberal Christian). Now I'm not sure who might be in the target audience, apart from the author herself.

In fact, the subtitle, "Some Thoughts on Faith," could probably stand to be amended to " More...

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Sep 17, 2011

Mark rated it:

Anne Lamott is the perfect antidote for anyone who thinks that all evangelical Christians are straight-laced, right-wing conservatives. Growing up the child of left-wing, atheistic, Bay-area radicals and coping with alcoholism, drugs and even bulimia, it is a miracle that she came to faith at all - or even survived her own self destructive tendencies.

In a delightful, ruggedly honest yet whimsical fashion, Lamott describes her unlikely journey from emptiness to reluctant searching to More...

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Aug 04, 2011

Jeff rated it:

I finished Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. The book was a very easy read and at times almost made me pee myself from laughter.

The book has not direct theme running through it. Each chapter stands on its own. It is written in the "Blue Like Jazz" format, except I think this book came out before "Blue Like Jazz" so I guess "Blue Like Jazz" was written in the "Traveling Mercies" format. In face you could say that I am behind the times in reading these books More...

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Jul 22, 2011

Emily rated it:

I recently read both Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott and The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Lemmon. Traveling Mercies is, in my opinion, everything that's wrong with faith-based books - it's all talk. It is the author rhapsodizing about her personal experiences with faith, which is such a highly personal topic that I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to read someone else's, when we all have our own. Dressmaker, on the other hand, is not intended to be a book on faith, but was highly More...

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Jun 12, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 23, 2011

Jenifer rated it:

I liked Lamott's tenderness in the face of real-life situations. I liked her love of community and her reverence for friendship. I liked her admissions of growth and progress while also recognizing her own human error and frailty. She reminded me to be more forgiving and to look for grace in the everyday. I am a better person for having read this.

A couple of things I really liked;

p82. "I called all my smartest friends. All the ones who believe in God told me to pray, so More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2010

Kat rated it:

I have had the fortune to not only hear Anne Lammott speak, but also to meet her in person. I had just graduated from college and was working as a rep for a box office when Lammott approached me at the Will Call station for a literary event in San Francisco one night. I told her I had seen her speak at my school in San Diego, and found her writing immensely inspirational. She graciously received the the compliment with a cool, yet friendly "Thank you. I like your glasses."

W More...

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Oct 30, 2009

Jan rated it:

This book is a collection of the author's thoughts and reflections on many and various subjects. She is a satirical, tongue-in-cheek comedian. Here are just a few of my favorites (some are rather thought provoking and serious).

"The two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me.' AND 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.'"
"Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure." Rumi
"I've been thinking of killing myself, but I need to lose five p More...

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Jun 15, 2009

Beverly rated it:

I am not a person comfortable with organized religion or discussions of faith and had a friend not lent me this book in a pile of other books, I might not have picked it up. But I'm very glad that I did. Anne Lamott's irreverence and humor made this a wonderfully likeable book and an enjoyable read. I could clearly relate to her as she was roughly the age I am now when she wrote the book, and the mother of a child who was just turning 8 at the end of the book - roughly the same age as my olde More...

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Jun 22, 2010

Nancy rated it:

I think this is my favorite of Anne Lamott's books. It feels a bit strained in places, but overall, Lamott has a wonderful ability to describe painful life moments - and joyful ones - with irreverent humor, yet in a way that detracts not at all from the emotional power that the moment holds. (At one point, she describes some friends who have just learned about their child's diagnosis of cystic fibrosis this way: "I know that sometimes these friends feel that they have been expelled from More...

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Feb 12, 2010

Gina rated it:

This is the best non-fiction book I've read. There were chapters I enjoyed less than others, but I suspect that other readers would find those same chapters the most moving, and probably at different points in my life I will be moved by different chapters than I was this month, and I know I will come back to these essays.

I don't share all of Lamott's conclusions about faith, but can still share many of her feelings about her journey, and this is all about the journey. I admire her, t More...

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Jul 27, 2011

Kurt rated it:

The title is a fair summary of the contents of this book. It really is just a collection of thoughts by Anne Lamott, largely on faith. I was expecting it to deal more with a specifically Christian faith, but Lamott really doesn't do that. In an alternate reality, if she had found Buddha instead of Jesus in her time of need, and if she had a strong community that didn't happen to be a church, there are really only three or four pages in this book that would need to be changed to fit her circumsta More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 25, 2009

Veronica rated it:

This book is not what I expected, I guess that's what I liked about it. I enjoyed her novel the Blue Shoe so when I happened upon this book in the church bookstore, I was intrigued. She is a liberal political activitist from San Francisco and her story and journey through faith is so refreshing. She really breaks the typical Christian mold and gives faith a perspective through the lense of a liberal, progressive political activist. I love the chapter on forgiveness related to the school moms More...

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Nov 25, 2008

Katie rated it:

I remember reading this book for the first time in a laundromat in Athens, GA many years ago. My pastor referenced it in a recent sermon, leading me pick it up again. In this autobiography Lamott is raw and real about her struggles and her faith. It is a tale about a broken woman in a broken world and how God picked her up, whether she liked it or not, and put her back together as only He can do. What I love about her is that she has no pretense; she filets herself open, being much more vulnerab More...

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Nov 29, 2009

Becky rated it:

Anne Lamott is one of those very special writers whose books make you feel like you've just spent a five-day bus tour with them, listening to them tell wacky and tragic stories, at the end of which you will declare one another best of friends, exchange phone numbers, and promise to meet up again for coffee if you're ever in the same time zone.

She also makes you write sentences like the above. I think her voice will continue seeping into my writing for two months at least, which is no More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 09, 2009

Megan rated it:

I adore Anne Lamott and this book. She is the most realistic Christian woman I have read in quite a long time, if not ever. She doesn't claim to have it all figured out and is far from perfect, but she loves Jesus openly and joyfully. Anne honestly writes about her childhood, adulthood and all of the in between times filled with alcohol, drugs, eating disorders, and pain; and explains how she finally found herself in the most unlikely place by finding Jesus. Without being preachy or making m More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jun 26, 2009

Katharine rated it:

I had heard such wonderful things about Traveling Mercies, maybe I was just setting myself up for disappointment. To make matters worse, I have read Anne Lamott's book on writing, Bird by Bird, and loved it AND her.

Traveling Mercies was just okay. It's well written and interesting, because Anne Lamott is an interesting person. The first chapters which chronicle her life journey to faith were fascinating, if sad. But after some pages of this, I started to feel like her constant self- More...

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