I read this after visiting a great friend who gave me a copy, and fell in love. I loved that she is a writer and a "normal" person at the same time. The unashamed honest humanity of it. And the beautiful musings on being, and being happy. The passion for ontology. Good for anyone trying to feel peaceful or normal or just wanting to share in someone else's life for a while.

So much of enjoyment in reading a book is timing. I tried this one years ago and thought I didn't like it. Turns out I didn't get it. For me, this book reentered my life at the right time. I am now a middle aged writer myself who's seen her share of rejection and ontological musings. This was like talking to a friend.

I just read this book again and it is still at the top of my list of favorite books. I needed this little jolt to jump start my reading again. I have not been reading as much lately and needed something to change that and this book did that for me. I guess I just needed a refill of greatness to fill my tank and get me back on the right track.

I really wish I knew something flowery and wonderful to say about this book. I cannot. All I can say is Maldeleine L'Enlgle just has a way of touching my heart and soul in a way that few other authors can. Many of her concerns over 40 years ago are concerns that I have now. The world has changed so much yet the important things are still the same.

I read this with high expectations because it is loved by so many of my friends. I did enjoy reading about her writing especially regarding A Wrinkle in Time, a beloved book for me when I was a child. I suppose I was disappointed in the thoughts on her faith. At some places she describes herself as Anglican and at other times as agnostic (and it is not a progression of going from being agnostic to becoming Anglican). I have always heard her touted as a “Christian author” but in reading this book, I didn’t get a sense of a personal Christian faith just more a general belief that there is a god out there.

I loved A Wrinkle in Time and many of Madeleine L'Engle's other children's books, but I'd never read any of her memoirs. This first entry in the Crosswicks journals was written in 1972, and Ms. L'Engle describes at times what it feels like to be in her early 50s and looking back over her earlier life.

This book feels almost like a meandering chat with a particularly warm acquaintance, but there's a lot of meat to it. As the author talks about her love of the family farm at Crosswicks and about her special place where she goes to have quiet thinking time, she has a lot of good observations and wisdom to impart. She touches on her long journey (and many rejections) on the way to publication, her love of her family, and how she sees herself as an author.

Ms. L'Engle was very active in the Episcopal church, and she shares some aspects of her faith journey in there as well. As someone who has had some rather uncomfortable encounters with very conservative fundamentalist circles, I was a little wary, but there is a level of humility and acceptance to her tone that I actually found soothing. I got the feeling that she wanted to reader to listen to her, not necessarily fully agree with her.

If you're a fan of L'Engle's books or you simply want a glimpse into one writer's imagination and way of thinking, I think you'll find this an engaging read.

Lovely, and meandering in just the right ways. Even convinced me to take another crack at A Wrinkle in Time.

This is a fascinating book to read, almost 50 years after it was published, and for me it was profound. It speaks so loudly to society today, politically and generationally, that it is both frightening (that some of the same thoughts and issues plague us) and enlightening (that it sheds new light on old issues) about where we are today as individuals and a country. Personally, it has been the right book at the right time to make me think (harder, differently, more deeply?) more interconnectedly about what I (and we) face on personal, local and global levels. It is a book that will stay with me for some time to come.

Much wisdom and many things to ponder, some better be forgotten, most to be re-evaluated, re-thought, re-filtered...Cool Mrs L'Engle ☺️

This book truly has been a Circle of quiet for me during a very busy time. I've had to quiet my mind in order to really get everything and I have SO enjoyed it and I've underlined SO much! Honestly if I didn't have so many other books to get to, I'd start it right over! Now I don't agree with everything per usual, but there is much of food for thought.

Wonderful.

L'Engle speculates on life and love and the nature of the universe, not to mention writing. Oh, the writing! It's fascinating to hear from a Newbery-winning author, someone whose work I've loved and whom I've looked up to since I was a child, and realize how similar we are in our quirks and fears and insecurities.

But what a hilarious, beautiful, intelligent woman she was! I'm anxious to get the rest of the Crosswicks journals, and I'm severely put out that her non-Time Quartet children's books seem to be mostly out of print! Grr.

n  Read my full review at jenniferneyhart.comn

I loved this book so much! And reading this reminds me of how much I love Madeleine L'Engle and how much I want to read (and re-read) everything she wrote!

I shouldn't really be surprised given how much I love L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time books. And this book gives us her thoughts on everything from theology, writing, children’s education, writing books for children vs. adults, and more.

There is also encouragement here for those who want to see their own books published: A Wrinkle in Time was rejected 26 times before it was published!

"A Wrinkle in Time was almost never published. You can’t name a major publisher who didn’t reject it. And there were many reasons. One was that it was supposedly too hard for children. Well, my children were 7, 10, and 12 while I was writing it. I’d read to them at night what I’d written during the day, and they’d say, “Ooh, mother, go back to the typewriter!” A Wrinkle in Time had a female protagonist in a science fiction book, and that wasn’t done. And it dealt with evil and things that you don’t find, or didn’t at that time, in children’s books. When we’d run through forty-odd publishers, my agent sent it back. We gave up." - L'Engle

n  See the rest of my review at jenniferneyhart.comn

Such a delightful and thought-provoking journal from Madeleine L'Engle. It is so like a conversation with this incredibly intelligent and gifted woman, it leaves you thinking on what you've read and makes you want to read it again.