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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
"In most couples there is the person who wins and the person who doesn't. The winner isn't necessarily stronger or smarter or righter. The winner is the person who won't give up, and the non-winner ("loser" is not the correct word for the person who does not win), at a certain point, realizes the battle is a silly one, and the spoils are not worth the extended warfare." Just one of the gems from Heidi Julavits; I must have highlighted a dozen passages and added insightful notes like "YES! Totally!"
RE-READ in 2019: This book of short essays kept me company every evening at bedtime for two straight weeks. Each one is short and satisfying. I highlighted even more this time around, and cried three times (I didn't have kids last time, and the essay about memorizing the curve of her son's back as she rubbed it straight wrecked me.)
"If I underline a sentence, I temporarily own it. It’s mine." - Heidi Julavits
RE-READ in 2019: This book of short essays kept me company every evening at bedtime for two straight weeks. Each one is short and satisfying. I highlighted even more this time around, and cried three times (I didn't have kids last time, and the essay about memorizing the curve of her son's back as she rubbed it straight wrecked me.)
"If I underline a sentence, I temporarily own it. It’s mine." - Heidi Julavits
This book was delightful. It reads more like a collection of essays than a diary per se, but I loved the writing (insightful, funny, self-aware). Most entries are centered around a memory or a specific event and how Julavits’ perception of that thing has changed or evolved. She talks about childhood, marriage, writing, but also lighter topics, like The Bachelorette. (She is an avid Bachelorette viewer.) She’d probably hate that I’m saying this, but if you’re looking for a good book to take on vacation or to the beach this summer, you might add this one to your list.
I really love this book, the language, the musings, the insights. Also, similarities with my own experience (Jaws, a tired mother trying to teach herself to miss what is not gone,...) I listened on Hoopla, but will probably buy this one in paper. Also? Inspired to read her novels.
This book made me gasp, guffaw and laugh aloud. I was transfixed by the author's honesty and willingness to give voice to feelings (especially mom feelings). I was initially unsettled by the structure, but ended up appreciating it. It has been years since I dreaded reaching the end of a book and I'm relishing that feeling, as well. I'm tempted to start it again and eager to read her other books. Confessing that I wish I could walk down a street and bump into her, with the hope we'd be long lost friends! It is SO dreamy when a writer does this.
Weirdly hard to put down considering it’s not...about...anything. I’m still not sure how she managed it. What did she do? I don’t know. It worked.
As a writer, I have mistaken how to use words. I write too much. I write like some people talk to fill silence. When I write, I am trying through the movement of my fingers to reach my head. I'm trying to build a word ladder up to my brain. Eventually these words help me come to an idea, and then I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite what I'd already written (when I had no idea what I was writing about) until the path of thinking, in retrospect, feels immediate. What’s on the page appears to have busted out of my head and traveled down my arms and through my fingers and my keyboard and coalesced on the screen. But it didn’t happen like that; it never happens like that.
Reading Julavits diary is an exploration of how we are all uniquely different yet also the same. Entries over the course of two years, across states and countries and detailing times in the writer's past, show how we all share the same worries, restlessness, fears, etc. within our own individual experiences.
While on paper I share only a few similarities with Julavits - female, white, American - we share many of the same feelings though in different contexts. At times self-indulgent, but that is the nature of diaries, in reading the meandering entries that start at one topic and flow to somewhere else entirely, I recognized in her writing my own style of thinking. This led to the revelation that perhaps we are all, or at least many of us, this way. This intimate look into one experience shows how we all share so much.
While on paper I share only a few similarities with Julavits - female, white, American - we share many of the same feelings though in different contexts. At times self-indulgent, but that is the nature of diaries, in reading the meandering entries that start at one topic and flow to somewhere else entirely, I recognized in her writing my own style of thinking. This led to the revelation that perhaps we are all, or at least many of us, this way. This intimate look into one experience shows how we all share so much.
I didn't know what to make of this experience once I'd finished the book. While reading it, I couldn't put it down but didn't know if this was due to the train accident effect or if I actually related to it. Upon further consideration, I realized the author reminded me of many friends from my past that I've since had to let go. Her subtlety negative and pessimistic voice got under my skin and I went into an - albeit shallow - depression after finishing this book.
Intimate and honest, but then it's not. Open and funny, until it isn't. I'm not sure I'm smart enough to read Heidi Julavits, but she's got so much going on in her mind that at least some of it is bound to intrigue you (like the E.B. White entry!)