Rating: 
Summary: Tribute to a great family
Review: Ivan Doig's "This House of Sky" is among the best books I've read. Great memories and pictures painted in the mind. Well written and poignant. The last chapters made me cry remembering my dad and uncle. You'll also love another similar book called "Rivers of Wind" by G. N. Penley. These are MUST reads.
Rating:
Summary: Tribute to a great family
Review: Ivan Doig's "This House of Sky" is among the best books I've read. Great memories and pictures painted in the mind. Well written and poignant. The last chapters made me cry remembering my dad and uncle. You'll also love another similar book called "Rivers of Wind" by G. N. Penley. These are MUST reads.
Rating:
Summary: A new West and a beautiful image
Review: Ivan Doig's "This House of Sky" is an American masterpiece. It's easy to see the influence this book has had, both directly and indirectly, on other notable Western writers such as Gretel Ehrlich, Pam Houston and Ron Franscell. It is pure poetry in prose form, and we begin to see how the Western mind is formed by the forever landscape.Doig is clearly an underappreciated American writer, particularly outside of the West. I would suggest this book to anyone who likes to read beautiful language about heartfelt subjects. I would further recommend "The Solace of Open Spaces" by Gretel Ehrlich and "Angel Fire" by Ron Franscell, both cut from the same lyrical, evocative Western cloth.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing piece of work!
Review: Ivan Doig's "This House of Sky" is one of the most moving books I have read. Raised in Montana myself, I can relate to almost every segment of this well written book. I have given it as gifts to several family members, all who have raved about it. Thanks, Ivan, for special memories and sharing your life.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite thing
Review: One of my favorite things is "This House of Sky" by Ivan Doig. I look forward every evening to another saga in the life of this Scot. He is an admirable writer with the heart of a poet. What he has done for Montana is beyond measuring. I prize this book, my introduction to Ivan Doig.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite thing
Review: One of my favorite things is "This House of Sky" by Ivan Doig. I look forward every evening to another saga in the life of this Scot. He is an admirable writer with the heart of a poet. What he has done for Montana is beyond measuring. I prize this book, my introduction to Ivan Doig.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite thing
Review: One of my favorite things is "This House of Sky" by Ivan Doig. I look forward every evening to another saga in the life of this Scot. He is an admirable writer with the heart of a poet. What he has done for Montana is beyond measuring. I prize this book, my introduction to Ivan Doig.
Rating:
Summary: A special book for us all
Review: Read this in the company of someone else. Every five minutes or so you'll call attention to something in the text -- a choice description, a picturesque flow of words, a bit of hilarity that will reduce you both to laughter. This is a book to be shared. Doig is a gifted writer with the facility of a James Agee in his choice of words and phrasing. On the page he presents a constant wild, vivid sensory impression, as if you were riding on horseback with him through his beloved Montana hills, sharing the terrain, people and history in ways you hadn't experienced before and couldn't experience anywhere else. His descriptions show keen insight and attention to detail through carefully chosen, apt simile and metaphor. "I had noticed at Jordan's," he writes about a situation he experienced as a child, "...the boarding child is something like a stranded visitor that people get accustomed to half-seeing at the edges of their vision -- and no one, least of all me, seemed to think there was much unusual about my alighting here and there casually as a roosting pullet." As a young boy, exploring: "For by greatest luck a silvered ship, high-hulled and pinging with emptiness, rode at the far end of the ranch buildings. A ship, at least to my imaginings. In the years when the machine chomped broadly through grainfields, it was called a combine. Now this dreadnaught stood, in its tones of dulling metal and cluster of idle gearwheels, for me to climb into..." Here's the epitome of fine writing. You won't find more vivid images anywhere and he doesn't stint at all with language. Like this description of a teacher: "She was buxom, much like Grandma with a half more plumped all around; her mounding in front and behind was very nearly more than the lackadaisical dresses wanted to contain. Leaning forward from the waist as she hurried about, she flew among us like a schooner's lusty figurehead prowing over a lazy sea." To read Doig's books is to experience Montana and a world long past. This is a book to be savored, treasured and read again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Tribute to Family
Review: Thank-you Ivan Doig. This book is wonderful. I had started the book and then put it down realizing that I wanted to savor this book. I picked this book up again after reading Close Range by Annie Proulx. What a relief House of Sky was. Great way to see Montana, the writing takes you there. This is Ivan Doig's story of growing up in Montana. It was not an easy life. His widowed father kept Ivan close, made sacrifices, taught him everything he knew. The father even made a truce with his mother-in-law for Ivan's sake. Ivan was raised by two strong characters! Which made Ivan a strong character. I would highly recommend this book. It touches all the parts of your heart.
Rating: 
Summary: This House of Sky, Tim Gauthier
Review: The House of Sky was a good book because Ivan Doig talks about his experiences he went through in the town of White Sulfur Springs. He talks about his fathers experiences while he was growing up and how he dealed with them.
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