Status Updates From Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Just read a super boring one and then a good one back to back.

'The way you love the first person who ever touches and and never quite love anyone in that way again'

Again just an extremely odd view to be passed along as a given that one can generalize to an entire population

If a partner thought like this it would be an immediate deal breaker for any sort of relationship

'where are you?
in a piano bar 😜
why?
why not? 😜'

Again the author is showing us her incomparable wit and uniqueness. So proud of the dialogue above she decides to publish it.
Insufferable

'Los Angeles? Oh people think the weather is nice but it's actually a hellscape with fire and 100+ mph winds and any time it's nice people just are ignorant re: how close to catastrophe they are'

I'm sensing a pattern with this author

Letters from Paradise

'Everything everyone else talks about is so frivolous and superficial. They can't understand me'

(while those the author implicitly feels above the entire time are, ironically, portrayed as much happier and more well-adjusted)

I’m reading this on my phone bc I can’t check it out on my kindle but I feel elevated and smart so far

Visiting Hawaii? Let's discuss the most morose topic (Pearl Harbor) the entire time and somehow turn an island vacation into an exercise in depression

-Sentence-level craft is very good
-A bit too neurotic / depressive / introspective in ways that don't resonate with me, or feel pseudo intellectual, but hearing a well-written voice like that is interesting in a sort of observational way
-Topical non-fic was better so far (eg title essay was quite good)

Some of the essays are fire, others are meh. Just read the titular piece and it was fire.

was too tempting to pass up when i saw this at the local bookstore, and i love it already, joan didion’s prose is ADDICTIVELY good