More on Wendell Berry: growing the wishlist.

My last post mentioned Wendell Berry as a recent discovery.

  From this review of Bonzo's and Stevens' guide to Berry, this quote:

The authors begin with the claim, "If we were asked to name one person to whom contemporary Christians need to listen, it would be this unlikely source, a man with no important connections to ecclesial or political corporate power." I would say this applies for all Americans today: Berry is the great prophet of our time and place.
And I doubt Messrs. Bonzo and Stevens would mind if I recommend that those new to Berry begin with his own books. Get a copy of his collected essays, or the poetry volume A Timbered Choir, or his sweeping novel Jayber Crow. Go someplace quiet and settle in. Prepare to have your worldview—whatever it is—upset. That's what prophets do.

Wendell Berry

Nathan Coulter deserves a full book review, though I may read more of the Port Royal series before eulogizing the initial offering. But briefly, I greatly enjoyed the book. I've paraphrased the quote below to a number of friends already, and was happy to find it requoted online since I thought the book was so good that I gave it away soon after reading it. Really, can you find a better recommendation than that???

Uncle Burley said hills always looked blue when you were far away from them. That was a pretty color for hills; the little houses and barns and fields looked so neat and quiet tucked against them. It made you want to be close to them. But he said that when you got close they were like the hills you’d left, and when you looked back your own hills were blue and you wanted to go back again. He said he reckoned a man could wear himself out going back and forth.