This book seemed to want to be many different things -- part nature writing, part illness memoir, part traAbandoned! (Please clap as I never do this.)
This book seemed to want to be many different things -- part nature writing, part illness memoir, part travelogue -- and so it felt underbaked. To mix metaphors, it included the seeds of some truly good ideas that needed more time in the ground. (Some reviewers have blasted this for reeking of privilege, which -- yeah, of course, she has time to write a book, and a memoir no less. What did you expect?) Once I realized it was going to be a frustrating read I returned to the library....more
"The Mom of Bold Action" and "Mother's Day" are alone worth the price of admission."The Mom of Bold Action" and "Mother's Day" are alone worth the price of admission....more
Mercy, this was good. There is a great harmony here between form and content; each is simple and straightforward, but simple certainly doesn't mean shMercy, this was good. There is a great harmony here between form and content; each is simple and straightforward, but simple certainly doesn't mean shallow. It's amazing how engaging this is given how little plot there is.
I just couldn't get into all the horsey stuff and cowboy drama in 'All the Pretty Horses.' Less plot, more existential ire, please. (Maybe 'No Country for Old Men' should be next.)...more
The book ostensibly tackles the question of what we do with the artists whose art we love who were pretty bad human beings. Definitely a post-#metoo bThe book ostensibly tackles the question of what we do with the artists whose art we love who were pretty bad human beings. Definitely a post-#metoo book, but historically broader and centered more on fans' and followers' emotional connection to the artwork -- in other words, how are *we* implicated in all this? -- than on the artists and the particular details of their badness. Dederer isn't satisfied with simple answers, and each chapter takes on a particular figure (Woody Allen, Pablo Picasso, Miles Davis) to unspool a particular thread of this ethical and emotional question. The writing is sometimes great, and sometimes seems fragmentary and half-baked. The section toward the end about monstrous female artists who 'abandoned' their children (abandoned being defined pretty broadly) belonged in another book. I realize she is underscoring that all humans can be pretty terrible sometimes and that art may require artists to often fail at relational commitments; I just didn't care that the author felt bad about being a writer and a mother. ...more
This is not a time management book, but rather a popular-level philosophy of time book. Its baseline argument is that, acknowledging and accepting ourThis is not a time management book, but rather a popular-level philosophy of time book. Its baseline argument is that, acknowledging and accepting our mortality, instead of causing us to rush from one goal to another in a YOLO frenzy, frees us from anxiety and allows us to use our limited time better, on what matters most. Burkeman argues that the more we try to "master" our time with various trendy productivity hacks, the more work we have left, and the more overwhelmed and behind we feel. There's a lot of wisdom here (and quite a few quotes from Christian sources) about embracing limits. Insofar as we're able to accept that we'll never get through our to-do list, we're better able to see the essential things that rise to the top of the list, and turn our attention to them with joy. ...more
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