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iameannis's review
5.0
Read this in one night, which is far too fast for understanding Dillard, but this was too compelling to read more slowly.
hadidee's review against another edition
2.0
I’ve read this twice now, and I just don’t get Annie Dillard
meadowbat's review
3.0
A lovely extended prose poem on writing in the vein of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, though it actually predates the other book. Bird by Bird offers more practical advice, which either makes it more useful or more audacious, depending on your take (mine is mostly the former). At times Dillard's rustic metaphors almost made me cry--see her description of a sphinx moth fighting fate: "It gained height and lost, gained and lost, and always lost more than it gained, until its heavy body dragged in the water, and it drowned before my eyes without a splash." At other times, her depiction of writing as this torturous act that only the kookiest, most dedicated lunatic would pursue seemed disingenuous (a complaint I have about Lamott too). Writing is fun, a lot of the time. And no matter how spare Dillard's various writing cabins are, she has achieved the kind of success that affords one writing cabins, which is hard to ignore, though she is clearly and wisely trying to do just that.
bethanybeyondthejordan's review
3.0
Audio.
3.5
It felt meandering to me. The two best parts were 1) when she talked about all the writers who wrote lush descriptions of place from far away (Mark Twain wrote Huck Finn from Connecticut, for instance; scholars have discovered Thoreau barely spent any time outside) and 2) the very end where she talks of her pilot friend Rahm, and that’s because I was interested in his time in Jordan with King Hussein.
A fine book by a beloved writer, just not for me.
3.5
It felt meandering to me. The two best parts were 1) when she talked about all the writers who wrote lush descriptions of place from far away (Mark Twain wrote Huck Finn from Connecticut, for instance; scholars have discovered Thoreau barely spent any time outside) and 2) the very end where she talks of her pilot friend Rahm, and that’s because I was interested in his time in Jordan with King Hussein.
A fine book by a beloved writer, just not for me.