Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
This book is a hoot. Julavits hits my funny bone just so. If I started pulling the quotes that made me laugh out loud we'd be here all day, so suffice it to say that I found this book extremely hilarious. Exactly what I needed to get the taste of So Much Pretty out of my mouth. Even better, mixed in with all of the funny are some profound bits about Life that struck me perfectly.This had to squeeze a little in order to get to four stars because there were some parts that dragged too much for my taste, but what the hell, I readily admit that I may have just been reading those bits when I was so tired I should have turned out the light & rolled over instead, so four it is. And here's a bit that I like, that I read to my husband - I don't know why I think this is laugh out loud funny, but I do. Thank you, Heidi Julavits.
"Most everyone living at the villa is an expert on foreign policy, on American and European intellectual history, on international economic issues, and on other topics I know nothing about. For months, my husband and I have worried that we'll have nothing to say to the experts at the many meals we're meant to share with them. Here is a good example of why we are worried. Last night my husband and I, in bed, Googled WW1 why did it happen."
"Most everyone living at the villa is an expert on foreign policy, on American and European intellectual history, on international economic issues, and on other topics I know nothing about. For months, my husband and I have worried that we'll have nothing to say to the experts at the many meals we're meant to share with them. Here is a good example of why we are worried. Last night my husband and I, in bed, Googled WW1 why did it happen."
I loved every moment spent with this book. Julavits's writing feels like a constant smart, thoughtful, poignant, often funny conversation with a good friend. I wasn't sure if I'd be comfortable with the out-of-order diary entries but it works like an unfolding mystery (which is what our lives are, yeah?) - we think about and do things not fully knowing how they'll turn out or what they might mean. Themes and people and objects recur in expected & unexpected ways, events and places become more & less significant.
All the stars for this one even though I have a lingering despair about never being able to produce such lovely, striking prose about seemingly ordinary life. I am sad to no longer have this book to look forward to each morning with tea, in my favorite chair.
All the stars for this one even though I have a lingering despair about never being able to produce such lovely, striking prose about seemingly ordinary life. I am sad to no longer have this book to look forward to each morning with tea, in my favorite chair.
I loved reading this. I looked forward to moments when I had time to dive back into it. Julavits is erudite, insightful, and funny. I can't really relate to a lot of her experiences, and it was a little off putting at times to be reminded of how traveled and affluent she is, but her writing is so perfect that I could never stay irritated for very long. I know I'll read this one again in the future.
I could deal with “it’s so annoying that my Maine oven works slightly differently than my New York oven,” and I could deal with “I lose my wallet all the time when I’m traveling the globe lolol and it’s no big deal,” but I can’t get over “I stole a used bed that I’ll barely use in my second home from a poor person at a garage sale who needed it because I wouldn’t respect myself if I gave it up.” While some of the writing was interesting, I can only take so much of wealthy people justifying their careless lives to themselves.
Smart, funny and engaging - this is like stumbling across a whole bunch of wonderful short (one-sided) conversations. I'm definitely going to chase up some of Julavits fiction now.
The Folded Clock: A Diary, will make you feel sane. This is because Julavits has written down things that you have privately thought of before, and now you know you are not alone. Or Julavits has gone so far past your own crazy internal thoughts that she makes you feel completely sane.
This diary will take you back to your honest and humorous childhood conversations with your best friend in the kitchen, talking late at night. The kind of conversations where you have no idea how you started at Topic A and ended up on Topic Purple. There is no plot and the timeline is not linear. Julavits gives us great lines that help to understand why you had a relationship with that unattractive person, how you know someone is a sexist pig but you still enjoy their company, and why sometimes human beings prefer not to expose the truth.
What I found refreshing was Julavits’s lack of a filter. These sporadic entries are genuine, pure and at times twisted. This diary reads as if Julavits is speaking to her best friend. Julavits is always going to take your side, be there for you, make you feel like a decent human being and at the same time she would never divulge your name.
This diary will take you back to your honest and humorous childhood conversations with your best friend in the kitchen, talking late at night. The kind of conversations where you have no idea how you started at Topic A and ended up on Topic Purple. There is no plot and the timeline is not linear. Julavits gives us great lines that help to understand why you had a relationship with that unattractive person, how you know someone is a sexist pig but you still enjoy their company, and why sometimes human beings prefer not to expose the truth.
What I found refreshing was Julavits’s lack of a filter. These sporadic entries are genuine, pure and at times twisted. This diary reads as if Julavits is speaking to her best friend. Julavits is always going to take your side, be there for you, make you feel like a decent human being and at the same time she would never divulge your name.
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
A marvel and a delight.
And one that doesn't accept easy classification. Ostensibly it's a diary, but it's not really—Julavits has used a bit of Cuisinartistry to chop up and reorder the entries, freeing them from the calendar and arranging them more to create echoes and throughlines between the entries. And though these essayistic little meditations may have began as diary entries, it's clear that Julavits has revised them a fair bit (in many entries she even refers knowingly to the book we hold in our hands). And it's a good thing, too; that work she's done on the entries transforms them, making each into a perfect tiny essaylet. They're about all sorts of mundane things that might be unremarkable if Julavits hadn't shown them to be anything but mundane.
She has a pitiless self-regard, and constantly reveals herself as a kind of neurotic narcissist. In other hands, the reader would find her to be tiresome, but Julavits has a great sly wit that makes even her most borderline behaviors into a comedy of the familiar. We read about her nuttiest moments, and we laugh, because we've all been there to one degree or another.
And one that doesn't accept easy classification. Ostensibly it's a diary, but it's not really—Julavits has used a bit of Cuisinartistry to chop up and reorder the entries, freeing them from the calendar and arranging them more to create echoes and throughlines between the entries. And though these essayistic little meditations may have began as diary entries, it's clear that Julavits has revised them a fair bit (in many entries she even refers knowingly to the book we hold in our hands). And it's a good thing, too; that work she's done on the entries transforms them, making each into a perfect tiny essaylet. They're about all sorts of mundane things that might be unremarkable if Julavits hadn't shown them to be anything but mundane.
She has a pitiless self-regard, and constantly reveals herself as a kind of neurotic narcissist. In other hands, the reader would find her to be tiresome, but Julavits has a great sly wit that makes even her most borderline behaviors into a comedy of the familiar. We read about her nuttiest moments, and we laugh, because we've all been there to one degree or another.
I expected much more from The Folded Clock than I got, and thus ended up abandoning it around 10% of the way through. I wasn't at all drawn in, and found a lot of her writing was rather pretentious.
May 7
Today I begin reading the new book by an author I adore. It's a non-fiction work in diary format, a departure from the author's normal tales. I look forward to my time in these pages. How often have I wanted to better know an artist whose work I love? This is my chance. I feel I am being invited to the author's residence for coffee and am allowed to ask anything. What insight will this author have? What are her deepest fears and most unspoken desires? What is she like when she isn't “being a writer”? I'm about to find out.
June 23
Today I finished trudging through the book I started last month. While my opinion of the author's talents regarding writing has not changed, my opinion of the author herself most definitely has. I had stated that I felt like I was being invited to the author's residence for coffee; I was wrong. While reading this book—this diary—I was transported to the author's residence, but it was for a formal dinner party, the kind where you feel awkward the entire time, wondering if everyone is staring at you because you put your fork down at the wrong angle on your plate. But no one at this party was paying me any attention, because the author was the center of the show. That's okay. It's what I expected. I wanted to know more about her. But what I'd hoped for was an intelligent conversation full of insight, humor, and heart. What I got instead was an intelligently-written drunken tirade. You know the dinner party where the hostess holds her wine glass at an angle and tells you about the time she urinated in a plane's airsickness bag and constantly reminds you how she's happy and stable? How she's glad she cheated on her first husband with her second, but keeps bringing it up every few minutes as if it haunts her? How she's proud to teach her eight-year-old daughter how to look more “fuckable”? How life is great because she spends the summer in Maine *sip* the winter in New York *sip* how she's been to Italy *sip* Germany *sip* France *sip* Morocco *sip*? That's the dinner party I just came home from.
I feel bad saying such things, because I really do appreciate this author's talent. While others have bashed her fiction (her four major works of fiction average a rating of 3.08 on Goodreads), called her writing juvenile and stilted, and written her off as an untalented hack, I have stood by her side. I have defended her brilliance. Ironically, it is this most recent work that maintains a rating that borders four stars. Apparently, I am in the minority.
What is it about this diary that others love? Is it the anecdote-laden short passages that are about nothing and everything? Is it the gossip? Is it the extravagant lifestyle? The constant abandon the author shows? Or the author's curious love of the reality television show, The Bachelor? Whatever it is, I want none of it.
I think what irritated me most is how the author repeatedly mentioned her woes and talked about her inability to buy things she wanted. In fact, a huge chunk of this book is about eBay shopping. When combined with her many mentions of her foreign travels and her dinner parties with elite artists, this book seems to be about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Maybe the author wishes for more than second-hand Internet shopping. Maybe travels to Europe are not enough. But as someone who knows what “starving artist” means, as someone who gave up full-time employment and security to write a novel and stay home with my kids, as someone who can't afford a vacation outside of the state of Kansas, and as someone who saves and saves and saves in order to buy $50 shoes from Famous Footwear, I find the author's complaints about $500 boots repulsive. There are much bigger concerns in the world, but the writer seems unaware or uncaring.
I hope the writer can forgive me. I did love the cadence and beauty of many of the sentences in this work. Maybe there is some brilliance in the parallel drawn between the juvenile diary of an adolescent girl and the juvenile diary of a middle-aged woman. I am still a fan. But my dearest author, I do not wish to be your friend. I hope you will continue to write many wonderful works of fiction, but please do not invite me again for a dinner party. I will come to your readings. I will continue to defend your novels. But friends we cannot be. And please know that your confusion of the Library of Congress classification with Dewey Decimal is unforgivable. For everything else, I'll accept apology in the form of a new novel.
Today I begin reading the new book by an author I adore. It's a non-fiction work in diary format, a departure from the author's normal tales. I look forward to my time in these pages. How often have I wanted to better know an artist whose work I love? This is my chance. I feel I am being invited to the author's residence for coffee and am allowed to ask anything. What insight will this author have? What are her deepest fears and most unspoken desires? What is she like when she isn't “being a writer”? I'm about to find out.
June 23
Today I finished trudging through the book I started last month. While my opinion of the author's talents regarding writing has not changed, my opinion of the author herself most definitely has. I had stated that I felt like I was being invited to the author's residence for coffee; I was wrong. While reading this book—this diary—I was transported to the author's residence, but it was for a formal dinner party, the kind where you feel awkward the entire time, wondering if everyone is staring at you because you put your fork down at the wrong angle on your plate. But no one at this party was paying me any attention, because the author was the center of the show. That's okay. It's what I expected. I wanted to know more about her. But what I'd hoped for was an intelligent conversation full of insight, humor, and heart. What I got instead was an intelligently-written drunken tirade. You know the dinner party where the hostess holds her wine glass at an angle and tells you about the time she urinated in a plane's airsickness bag and constantly reminds you how she's happy and stable? How she's glad she cheated on her first husband with her second, but keeps bringing it up every few minutes as if it haunts her? How she's proud to teach her eight-year-old daughter how to look more “fuckable”? How life is great because she spends the summer in Maine *sip* the winter in New York *sip* how she's been to Italy *sip* Germany *sip* France *sip* Morocco *sip*? That's the dinner party I just came home from.
I feel bad saying such things, because I really do appreciate this author's talent. While others have bashed her fiction (her four major works of fiction average a rating of 3.08 on Goodreads), called her writing juvenile and stilted, and written her off as an untalented hack, I have stood by her side. I have defended her brilliance. Ironically, it is this most recent work that maintains a rating that borders four stars. Apparently, I am in the minority.
What is it about this diary that others love? Is it the anecdote-laden short passages that are about nothing and everything? Is it the gossip? Is it the extravagant lifestyle? The constant abandon the author shows? Or the author's curious love of the reality television show, The Bachelor? Whatever it is, I want none of it.
I think what irritated me most is how the author repeatedly mentioned her woes and talked about her inability to buy things she wanted. In fact, a huge chunk of this book is about eBay shopping. When combined with her many mentions of her foreign travels and her dinner parties with elite artists, this book seems to be about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Maybe the author wishes for more than second-hand Internet shopping. Maybe travels to Europe are not enough. But as someone who knows what “starving artist” means, as someone who gave up full-time employment and security to write a novel and stay home with my kids, as someone who can't afford a vacation outside of the state of Kansas, and as someone who saves and saves and saves in order to buy $50 shoes from Famous Footwear, I find the author's complaints about $500 boots repulsive. There are much bigger concerns in the world, but the writer seems unaware or uncaring.
I hope the writer can forgive me. I did love the cadence and beauty of many of the sentences in this work. Maybe there is some brilliance in the parallel drawn between the juvenile diary of an adolescent girl and the juvenile diary of a middle-aged woman. I am still a fan. But my dearest author, I do not wish to be your friend. I hope you will continue to write many wonderful works of fiction, but please do not invite me again for a dinner party. I will come to your readings. I will continue to defend your novels. But friends we cannot be. And please know that your confusion of the Library of Congress classification with Dewey Decimal is unforgivable. For everything else, I'll accept apology in the form of a new novel.