Book review: 'All the Beauty Still Left,' selected by Spencer Reece

Gulf Today Report

On the back cover of Spencer Reece's new book is a line from Anne Frank: "Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."

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His small, elegant book — a collection of quotes, illustrated with his own watercolors — is certainly a part of that beauty.

"These images flow from my praying and meditating," Reece writes in the introduction to his modern-day Book of Hours.

Reece, an Episcopal priest and poet who grew up in Minnesota, has selected brief quotes from a varied group of people — Louise Gluck, Yo-Yo Ma, Gertrude Stein, Jericho Brown, Louis Armstrong — to take us through a day. "You speak the path on which you walk. Your words make the trail," writes Minnesota poet Diane Glancy.

Reece's paintings are charming — landscapes and cityscapes, a few dogs, a self-portrait or two. They "flow from my praying and meditating," he writes in the introduction. "They marry my brain to my heart."

Just 4 inches by 6 inches, this is a book to slip into a pocket or a purse and carry throughout the day. And be happy.