Although I’ve heard of her, with many of her books on those ‘books you must read before you die’ lists, I’d never read any Joan Didion before. Following this, I’ll definitely be reading her again. A series of essays on elements of American life from the late 60’s to the late 70’s, The White Album documents the death throes of the sixties amidst the Manson murders, where you could often find a complete stranger wandering around your house in LA neighbourhoods gone to seed, meeting […]
Some men (fewer women) are solitary, unattached to any particular place or institution, most comfortable not exactly alone but in the presence of strangers
This is just our annual reminder…honestly I think I first did this a year ago this week (it’s spring break)…that I don’t like Joan Didion or her writing. This book is…well it’s something. There’s a story here about a senator’s wife being in the limelight in overly unfair and invasive ways. She shows up in the paper several times a week and despite her attempts to remain closed off to the fame and infame, she is thrust otherwise. It’s a perfectly interesting story, and given […]
Odds and Ends
Presumed Innocent: 4/5 Stars So I didn’t realize this was the same as the Harrison Ford movie until about halfway through the book. I picked it up for two distinct reasons: 1) It was listed as one of the best legal thrillers (old school, we’ll call it) and that reason checks out and 2) the audiobook was read by Edward Hermann, which is obviously great. I have heard him read one book before and it was so good. So the novel itself is told from […]
“I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.”
In the documentary The September Issue, the generally intimidating and inscrutable Anna Wintour is shown interacting with her high school- or college-aged daughter. The scene is only a few seconds long, but it shows a very human Wintour, just being a mom trying to be cool in front of her daughter. Sometimes we forget that icons are people. I kept thinking about that scene when reading Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Prior to reading this book, Joan Didion was more of a literary giant or […]