3,5*

I've been in love with Joan Didion's essays and style since my teens. Cold, razor-sharp, spare, precise--- one of the finest American jounalists of the last hundred years. "We Tell Ourselves Stories" collects Didion's work across all the dark last half of the century. Fine writing, serious insights.

I was just under halfway through this collection when I had to return to the library. I'll definitely request it back someday, when there are less papers to grade or musical rehearsals to attend. What I love about Didion's writing is that history and culture plays such a strong part of her narrative. Her voice is distinct, honest, and stylish without fills.

Super goed geschreven maar te heftig voor mijn tere zieltje

"Remember, writers are always selling somebody out." Didion reminds us of this in the opening to her collection of all her previously published nonfiction. And as you read you get the sense that Didion is indeed offering us an honest account of the people and situations described, regardless of how her interviewees may have hoped to have been portrayed.

“As it happens I am comfortable with…those who live outside rather than in, those in whom the sense of dread is so acute that they turn to extreme and doomed commitments; I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people manage to fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.”

okay, so i skipped two whole books in here. 1100 pages of disappointment with the world, however magically phrased, is a lot. i just need to move on with my life, so i'm putting it on the read shelf. don't judge me.

got asked if i had to read this for uni LMAO

I am a great believer in buying collections, despite them generally depriving me of the sense of having finished something. I've now re(read) the essays from The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I'll pick up the rest later...

I don't agree with her on a lot of issues but what I love about her writing is that she refuses to let things be narrated to her - she creates her own narratives and does so beautifully. I find it quite inspiring because I'm not an 'original' person and it's just really clicked for me that 'creativity' encompasses a much larger sphere than I had thought... I knew that cadence & perspective were important but I suppose I had relegated them to being secondary characteristics to that inventive ability... and her writing, her ability to write what are essentially analytical mood pieces on current events, shows that's not the case.

everything you need to kickstart a joan binge.

Joan Didion has a marvelous way with words. She allows the perfect turn of phrase to make her sentences drip with whatever feeling she wants to convey.

I had never heard of Joan Didion. I suppose I missed the boat on that one. Not that Didion is out of style, but the point is I never heard of her in her prime. This is a book that I took out on a whim. Sometimes I walk through the aisles of the Library and pick out books that look really interesting to me. Occasionally, I get lucky and find some real gems. This is one such book. The title is the first thing that leaped out at me.

Apparently, this book is a collection of Joan Didion’s Nonfiction. I believe the publisher collected her works across the board, with magazine articles and so on, and put them together into one massive tome. It aggregates seven full books into one.

This book was quite good.

Since this collection is really half a dozen books in one, I have been reading it in bits since last fall... it's pretty amazing and this junk is totally going to get 5 goodreads stars once I wrap it up. Loved reading 'Salvador', Didion's chilling series of reports from El Salvador in th 80s. Am currently reading (and loving) 'Miami', which highlights to strange history and complexities of a city that is a bridge between two continents. Engrossing stuff - this woman is a genius.