Finding Beauty in a Broken World

I know, I know, most people drop out in the prairie dog section, but if you stick with it that section begins to have a certain rhythm and creates its own subtle narrative structure You find yourself suddenly caring about the individual prairie dogs as characters, in addition to the obvious goal of making you rethink the prevailing attitude toward them as varmints But seriously, if you get through the prairie dog section, everything has an odd and elegant way of coming together.

Sooo apparently the idea to present the book like a mosaic came to Terry Tempest Williams in a feverish epiphany right before the book was gonna be sent in to get published Fine That explains the way that the structure of the story is too.raightforward for my taste And too rigidly divided into thematic sections intro mosaics, prairie dogs, Rwanda, mosaic y choppy conclusion I m of the opinion that such experimental, mosaic inspired artsy fartsiness ought to be experimental Make the pieces small [...]

Briefly, on form as prose poetry, this gorgeous work is totally accessible for people who don t consider themselves poetry reader It s riveting You ll want to keep reading.On content How can you NOT read a book that yokes together an apprenticeship as a mosaic artist in Ravenna, her grappling with the plight of endangered prairie dogs, which are simultaneously hunted and protected by the U.S and women in Rwanda Williams offers a timely, fresh take on global life as an organismic rather than a co [...]

Terry has the rare ability to see her life through series of connected, relatable events She puts small examples into grand ideas, and makes those pertinent to her readers In this, she connects her mosaic studies in Italy with her passionate and thorough study of endangered prairie dogs at Bryce Canyon, and then her humanitarian journey through Rwanda The portion on prairie dogs is daunting at first it s truly a transcription of her journal entries but becomes magical as it weaves each individua [...]

There are layers to go through in order to understand humanity Williams excavates them A broken world can be put together again in a beautiful way There are rules to making mosaic Attend to light, to shape Find the right piece Prairie dogs live communally, kiss, and greet the sun In Rwanda is a layer of hell How hard to go there this is a great book She provides space for the reader to absorb what is written Great powerful, mighty, deep, spiritual, truthful Hard, but not difficult to read.

Okay the author s basic premise is that life is like a mosaic I love mosaics at broken pieces can be put back together to form something new and while different beautiful in its new way I m having a really hard time with this book So the book is divided into 3 parts the author studying mosaic with an Italian master The author studying prarie dogs in the American SW and Bush s total disregard for the environment big picture and how relocation of prarie dogs will eventually lead to the extinction [...]

Terry tempest Williams is my favorite author The first book of hers that I read was Refuge I read finding beauty in a Broken world a few years ago but it is the book that I most often go back and select favorite passages and pages to read again She has the naturalists eye and skill of observation, she has the artist s curiosity and patience to take tiny fragile pieces of glass and create beautiful mosaic, she has the voice and heart of a poet and the compassion of a bodhisattva and the experienc [...]

All living beings, though sometimes broken, are resilient and the harmony of life is very powerful This masterful book combines the ancient art of making mosaics, with the fragile ecology of prairie dog communities and the war torn broken communities of Rwanda in a way that gives me hope for the resilience of human and than human communities as we strive for a harmonious life.

Devastating It strips the skin from the hide and burns the fat from the brain.Reading this after reading Arctic Dreams and Strange Piece of Paradise, it s clear how much better a writer Terry Tempest Williams is than most other humans Already her Refuge is on my shortlist of most important books, and now this one joins it on the shelf of books I d want if I were ever stranded on an island There is so much wisdom, so much humanity here and so much devastation and horror It is a quest to be dignif [...]

I really wanted to like this book my sister gave it to me and I was so looking forward to reading it that I had saved it to enjoy while travelling Having also been involved in some community mosaic projects it seemed like a perfect read.Unfortunately, I had a very hard time getting into the style of this book The sentences are short and there are many incomplete sentences just phrases The page format lots of mini paragraphs came across choppy to me and made it difficult for me to immerse myself. [...]

A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken So begins Terry Tempest William s heartfelt experiment with form Three pieces come together to make up the book, placed side by side like the chips of stone that form a mosaic In the first we travel with Williams to Ravenna in Italy, where she learns the ancient art itself, but from the moment we leave we delve into a world that is undeniably broken In Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, Williams volunteers as part of a group of scientists studyi [...]

When I got this book for summer reading in June, I didn t know what to think about it In general I tend to go for fiction, as elements can be added and it s exciting You kind of feel the book s patterns, its foreshadowing.I get that this book was supposed to be a mosaic itself, but that realization, the oh, that s cool didn t keep me interested in the book In fact, I found the language at times to be sloshy, moving through it slowly and needing breaks to rest my eyes It s wordy And why didn t [...]

Byzantine mosaics, prairie dogs and Rwandan genocide It wasn t the prose that kept me reading this book it s pretty choppy and repetitive But the message is one that has stuck with me The author, I gather, is a very unorthodox Mormon who starts her journey at a mosaic workshop in Ravenna, Italy, home to the most unbelievable Byzantine mosaics in various churches, chapels, and tombs throughout this rather small city I visited in 2005 and was awestruck by the mosaics After that first rather brief [...]

Ms Williams deep writings always wind there way into my heart and mind, insisting upon being pondered This latest of her works is no exception The reader is slowly pulled into her experiences in Italy learning the ancient art of mosaic, as well as the hot dry discomfort of being installed in a wood tower helping to research prairie dogs in Utah There is sadness in reading of the brutal and callous behavior of many of the individuals she comes into contact with But, there are also those she encou [...]

Williams sets out to find the beautiful among the ruins of humanity, and does so exploring both the vanishing worlds of the prairie dogs and the devastated, all but forgotten world of Rwanda, connecting their survival with the need to create a mosaic Reading about the dogs grew a bit tedious, although I certainly thought they were cute when I lived in Boulder, although I was terrified of running them over when I hit certain parts of the bike path However, the last part of the book, when Williams [...]

I am a huge Terry Tempest Williams fan, but so far this is my least favorite of her books I can see how she was trying to connect her topics, but they were so far apart that I don t think it went that well Fortunately I had recently just read Left to Tell so I was aware of the Rwandan Holocaust which helped a lot for understanding the second half of the book But the biologist in me wins, and my favorite part was actually the prairie dog survey logs although I was surprised that she included so m [...]

Mosaic, very moving how she twines several worlds into one tapestry Signed by Terry, given to me by my brother Cried often and learned lots pg 23 If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go We are talking about the body of the beloved, not real estate pg 25 Henry Bugbee the tenets of Scripture are meant to be occasions for wonder, not the termination of it.

Having read many of TTWilliams books before and loved them I was disappointed in this book It is just brief paragraphs of information that I could never tie together and didn t hold my attention Her focus has stayed the same our earth and value but I couldn t hold prairie dogs, mosaics and our ever expanding population and the effect on the earth together to hold my interest Oh well.

I learned that Prairie dogs can be seen by some with imagination and love as Prayer Dogs and that recovery from genocide is a long and painful process in Rwanda I felt beauty and intensity while reading this book and have admired this author for a very long time, having many times visited her home state of Utah.

This is my Dec book group read Many people love Terry Tempest Williams not so much Her style doesn t work for me snippets, paragraphs lined up one after another page after page and not really tied together in any kind of a flow.

Strange, disjointed book Did NOT enjoy and think the author could ve said the same thing in a well thought out, concise essay.

Finding Beauty in a Broken World provides a wonderful snapshot of the best and worst of life on Earth Like many of her books, Williams weaves the chapters of her book together with a common thread In this case the book begins and ends with an analogy comparing the study of mosaic to an understanding of our fragile human and natural world Williams builds her case using a series of stories from around the world including her experiences in Italy, Africa, and southern Utah return return Although I [...]

The author uses mosaics as an extended metaphor because of the way the art form brings broken pieces together to create a beautiful and harmonious whole As a skilled mosaicist tells Williams Part of the nature of man is to recompose a unity that has been broken In mosaic, I re create an order out of shards The book uses an experimental style the text is broken into short bits with space between, like the broken tessera used to create a mosaic The first 50 ish pages are on the history and creatio [...]

I think I wanted this book to be something else Williams writes beautifully and is wholly activist, poet, and naturalist in and of herself, but does not quite manage to be wholly any of these things in this piece This is a matter of preference Finding Beauty in a Broken World reads as a mosaic, a community of vignettes that come together towards central themes, but sometimes I get the feeling that the occasionally vast fault lines between the elements mosaic, prairie dog communities, and Rwanda, [...]

TTW is one of my favorite authors The only problem is she isn t much older than me so I have to wait for her to write I liked this book, the mosaic concept was very interesting to me because I just finished writing my dissertation on CA ground squirrels as a keystone species which required extensive background reading about prairie dogs so I saw many parallels with my own work That being said, I m not sure I would recommend this book especially to anyone who hasn t read TTW before If you are al [...]

What makes Terry Tempest Williams so interesting to read is her membership in conflicting leagues those of personal conviction and familial association She handles those divisions with that power of transcendence love I especially enjoyed reading the section on the mosaics created to commemorate the Rwandan genocide Powerful stories and a powerful artistic responsechokengtitik

titikchokengs The full title of the book begins with the word Mosaic, and that is what the book is.

Only Terry Tempest Williams could combine the art of mosaic, and the digging of prairie dogs, her family of pipeline layers, and women farmers in Rwanda after the genocide, in one sweeping book I thought I d never make it through her detailed observations of the prairie dog colony in Bryce Canyon, but I m glad I persevered because those observations tie in tightly with her experiences in Rwanda.Definitely an original book.

What a beautiful, inspiring book Terry Tempest Williams creates connections where one would initially see none between mosaics, prairie dogs, and Rwanda and in doing so raises questions about our world and the way we relate to it and each other I want to read it again right now just to find the littler details I know I missed along the way.

I read this book in June I love Terry Tempest Williams work and this is was a remarkable book The three parts learning how to make a mosaic, the life of prairie dogs, and doing humanitarian work in Rwanda all tied together and truly gave a glimpse of how do we find beauty in a broken world It was a book of hope and grace.

Delved into this without first reading what it was about anything TTW is good enough for me and almost gave up through the mosaic section But I pressed on, and sure enough, the mosaic making pulled the rest of the book right along We live in a fragmented world and Tempest, as ever, creates beauty from all the raw and broken pieces.