Book Review: Gmorning, Gnight

If you haven’t heard of Lin Manuel Miranda, I think I need to ask you where you’ve been these past few years first before reading this post. I mean seriously, where have you been?

I’ve been a fan of Lin since I fell in love with the music from the musical Hamilton, something that I first listened to on Spotify. I’ve followed his career since then and have taken to following him on Twitter, where he shares snippets of his life as well as inspiring tweets for his fans.

It is the inspiring tweets that he shares every morning and evening (US time) that make up the content of his new book, Gmorning, Gnight. Illustrated by Jomny Sun, the book shares some of the best good morning and good night tweets that Lin has shared with his Twitter followers these past few years. When he first started doing those tweets, I was already attempting to save some of my favorite ones (saving them for a rainy day, for days when I need them most). Turns out that I wasn’t the only one doing that, because the reason this book came out was that people wanted to have a saved copy of their favorite tweets too. 

According to Lin, the reason that he was sharing those tweets/inspirational messages was initially not for the fans, but for himself. He wrote what he thought he needed to hear for himself that day and night, which eventually us followers managed to relate to our own lives. I can attest to the fact that there are those moments when I am having a difficult day and those tweets help me to feel better and inspire me to keep going. I love that I now have some of those tweets in book form to help me get through some of the tough times. 

I love that the layout of the book is very clean, with just one message per page (or two per page, with the next page containing the corresponding illustration). Each message is typed in a normal-sized font instead of making it larger to fill the space. The illustrations by Jonny Sun are also not too overwhelming on the page and complement the simplicity of the text layout.

The messages shared in the book (and on Lin’s Twitter feed) have this feeling of words being shared by a good friend, of a mentor giving advice or a push forward for your day/night. The messages are things that I believe people can relate to at any given point in their lives. 

Gmorning Gnight for me is a book that you can read from start to finish, or if you prefer you can open a random page and get your inspiration from there. I prefer reading the messages one day at a time, one in the morning and another at night --- just to let things sink in.

I hope that this is just the first of a series of books like this for Lin Manuel. He still tweets good morning and good night tweets so there is a whole slew of new inspirational messages that I’d love to see in a book one day. This book may be more expensive than most, but I think that it is worth it!