Jan Priddy > Recent Status Updates

slow

From the charity shop around the corner. So far it's better than what I set aside. [Two books I just could not read, one because it was tedious and annoying, the other because the cover and interior design was just so very ugly I couldn't stand to read it.]

Eager to finish but also wanting more. I have learned something every one of these essays—and argued with the author only once—and that newness is both rare and precious in my experience.

Most any one of these essays could be a model for how to ground information in a personal experience.

My observations during a total solar eclipse were not like Macdonald's. Spectacular, but different. The cold, the color the light, waves of lighting moving across the ground, and bats appeared when the sun was gone.

I didn't recognize immediately that the title comes from a Le Guin essay I used to teach, "Hunger." It was a speech she gave at a luncheon. Brilliant.

These are wonderful essay, but I am crashing through novels just now.

Some reviews compare this to Cloud Atlas, but the more obvious comparison, to my mind, is the work of Connie Willis, beginning with The Doomsday Book, the humorous To Say Nothing of the Dog, and the late Blackout and All Clear.

I was certain I'd read this collection, but no. I know "Girl," which is worth the entire book. I've read three of Kincaid's novels, a work of nonfiction, and now this. I can recommend "Girl."

The first time I read this book, it was the paperback, probably in 1990. I took a class from Sandra Dorr and she asked us to locate the instructional voice in our heads and write our own version of "Girl." We then each shared one line with the class, compiled the list and came up with our version we titled "Keep Your Knees Together." It was incredible.