gilead...

Allison has hopefully already persuaded you to read this beautiful crafted and moving book, but I'd like to add my own encouragement:

Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as an aesthetic rather than morally judgemental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it? ...I do like Calvin's image, though, because it suggests how God might actually enjoy us. I believe we think about that far too little. It would be a way into understanding essential things, since presumably the world exists for God's enjoyment, not in any simple sense, of course, but as you enjoy the being of a child when he is in every way a thorn in your heart.
[124-125]

It strikes me that your mother could not have said a more heartening word to me by any other means than she did by loving that unremarkable book so much that I noticed and read it, too. That was providence telling me what she could not have told me.
[133]

Seriously, how cool is that?! I want to encourage and challenge people through the books I read and recommend. Check off another point for the English Majors!