ciarakilroy98's review against another edition
reflective
4.5
Rip Joan Didion you would have loved anti CGRB injections for migraines
dismantled's review against another edition
3.0
i so badly wanted to fall in love with this book, like many women in their twenties did before me. unfortunately, my intro to joan didion wasn’t as life-changing as i wanted it to be. i don’t know if it’s the lack of sentimentality in her writing style, or the essays about things i simply did not care for, but this was really a struggle to finish. there were some essays i truly enjoyed, but there are some that dragged. i will still read more of her works, but i wish i hadn’t started with this one.
hillofbeans's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
littlebean01's review against another edition
4.0
note: so upsetting i still have no clue how goodreads works. it's my first time reading this NOT a re-read :(
for (embarrassingly sentimental, very un-Didion) reasons, i feel a kinship to Didion as i read her essays, and my heart does a little dance whenever i read about her time at Berkeley; as she writes about her Middle English class or as she describes the "mood of Berkeley" at the time as "one of mild but chronic 'depression.'"
although she's describing a cultural zeitgeist that characterized Berkeley students at the time, i'm tickled by how true that description is now, too. not in the same grand sense of feeling the meaninglessness of searching for any kind of meaning, but in the sense that so many of my friends here feel a different, smaller 'depression.' in the mundane: navigating a huge university with a ton of students, feeling lost, not knowing what we want to do after college, or trying to find people whose souls speak to you. or maybe that grander depression does percolate through to the mundane, too, and that's why small things are so difficult — getting out of bed, going to class, talking to people — and it just takes on a different form, but it's very much the same kind of depression.
yet Didion's writing makes it pretty clear that the depression of the 50s is most certainly characterized by class, too. she writes like there's an element of ennui plaguing the students of the 50s; her description of the students' relative indifference to politics or the Board of Regents, for example, reminds us that the privileged can afford to be so complacent and indifferent. they can afford the luxury of feeling like nothing matters; everything is inconsequential.
while i'm a great admirer of Didion's writing, i'm struck (as are many others) by her clinical precision and her writing's emotional detachment even as she writes about her excruciating migraines and insights as the pain recedes, leaving gratitude in its wake. she writes, "For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact. There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria. I open the windows and feel the air, eat gratefully, sleep well. I notice the particular nature of a flower in a glass on the stair landing. I count my blessings."
even then, her writing remains remarkably unemotional, unsentimental. on one hand, i admire her ability to take a topic and get as close to a purely intellectual exploration of it, imbuing a subject matter as deeply personal as a chronic, painful medical condition with the same clinical exactitude as she would writing about the bureaucracy of the California Department of Transportation or California's drought. maybe i'm just missing the point, but i can't help but feel like there's something to be explored in human emotion, too, and the irrational. maybe it's because my own writing is overly sentimental, pregnant with too much emotion.
sometimes, when i find myself dreading venturing outside, or even going to class, i remind myself that these are the grounds she once walked 70 years ago in her formative years, and i romanticize (again, in a way Didion probably would've detested) my own time i have left here.
for (embarrassingly sentimental, very un-Didion) reasons, i feel a kinship to Didion as i read her essays, and my heart does a little dance whenever i read about her time at Berkeley; as she writes about her Middle English class or as she describes the "mood of Berkeley" at the time as "one of mild but chronic 'depression.'"
although she's describing a cultural zeitgeist that characterized Berkeley students at the time, i'm tickled by how true that description is now, too. not in the same grand sense of feeling the meaninglessness of searching for any kind of meaning, but in the sense that so many of my friends here feel a different, smaller 'depression.' in the mundane: navigating a huge university with a ton of students, feeling lost, not knowing what we want to do after college, or trying to find people whose souls speak to you. or maybe that grander depression does percolate through to the mundane, too, and that's why small things are so difficult — getting out of bed, going to class, talking to people — and it just takes on a different form, but it's very much the same kind of depression.
yet Didion's writing makes it pretty clear that the depression of the 50s is most certainly characterized by class, too. she writes like there's an element of ennui plaguing the students of the 50s; her description of the students' relative indifference to politics or the Board of Regents, for example, reminds us that the privileged can afford to be so complacent and indifferent. they can afford the luxury of feeling like nothing matters; everything is inconsequential.
while i'm a great admirer of Didion's writing, i'm struck (as are many others) by her clinical precision and her writing's emotional detachment even as she writes about her excruciating migraines and insights as the pain recedes, leaving gratitude in its wake. she writes, "For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact. There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria. I open the windows and feel the air, eat gratefully, sleep well. I notice the particular nature of a flower in a glass on the stair landing. I count my blessings."
even then, her writing remains remarkably unemotional, unsentimental. on one hand, i admire her ability to take a topic and get as close to a purely intellectual exploration of it, imbuing a subject matter as deeply personal as a chronic, painful medical condition with the same clinical exactitude as she would writing about the bureaucracy of the California Department of Transportation or California's drought. maybe i'm just missing the point, but i can't help but feel like there's something to be explored in human emotion, too, and the irrational. maybe it's because my own writing is overly sentimental, pregnant with too much emotion.
sometimes, when i find myself dreading venturing outside, or even going to class, i remind myself that these are the grounds she once walked 70 years ago in her formative years, and i romanticize (again, in a way Didion probably would've detested) my own time i have left here.
soinavoice's review against another edition
3.0
joan didion is a talented prose stylist but a lot about this collection has not aged well (eg "why are women complaining about inequality in the work place? why don't they just find a different job?" or multiple essays about writers and icons who have not survived in the cultural consciousness). i'm glad i read it, but i wouldn't read it again.