luismmolina's review against another edition
It didn't reach a rating above 4.0 after 29%
chelseamartinez's review against another edition
3.0
This is the first pandemic book I've read, which is mostly about 2020; similar to Grand Union, which was "Trump-era," it suffers from coming out when someone must have thought all of this would be over; it's not a smugness exactly but a presumption that this slight book captures a wholeness, that I dread in reading in non-fiction for the foreseeable future.
gjpeace's review against another edition
4.0
I tried to savor this small volume as much as I could, because it is a work worth savoring, but I ended up reading the last four pieces in one sitting this morning.
Timely, obviously, but many of the essays surprisingly focus more on small moments or work more as character sketches than as Big Statements on How We Live Now. That said, my two favorites were a piece about time and how we fill it up and another about suffering in isolation. Will most likely read the former with my students next week in order to ease into the semester.
Timely, obviously, but many of the essays surprisingly focus more on small moments or work more as character sketches than as Big Statements on How We Live Now. That said, my two favorites were a piece about time and how we fill it up and another about suffering in isolation. Will most likely read the former with my students next week in order to ease into the semester.
yhtgrace's review against another edition
3.0
"Writing is routinely described as “creative”—this has never struck me as the correct word. Planting tulips is creative. To plant a bulb (I imagine, I’ve never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation. Writing is control. The part of the university in which I teach should properly be called the Controlling Experience Department. Experience—mystifying, overwhelming, conscious, subconscious—rolls over everybody. We try to adapt, to learn, to accommodate, sometimes resisting, other times submitting to, whatever confronts us. But writers go further: they take this largely shapeless bewilderment and pour it into a mold of their own devising. Writing is all resistance. Which can be a handsome, and sometimes even a useful, activity—on the page. But, in my experience, turns out to be a pretty hopeless practice for real life."
bookishstone's review against another edition
3.0
This isn't a genre I usually read, but I did enjoy it.