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rimamandwee's review against another edition
2.0
After a stint with novels, I was craving a non-fiction piece that scratched my itch to get lost in a feeling of classic Americanah, like a summer drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains with Fleetwood Mac blasting from the speakers. I found it in Joan Didion. Like any book of essays (unless you’re Jia Tolentino), I’m not entranced with the subject of every piece, but it’s nearly impossible not to be captivated by Didion’s language. I find myself falling into her prose like liquid sloshing through a funnel. I’ve never read work that uses such Layman rhetoric while still igniting a muscle memory in me of reading academia. The words she strings together, individually, have simple meaning, but I find myself looping back and forth in her sentences, like I won’t be able to comprehend it without mentally fixing my posture. And like all great books, hers is a work that reminds me that I’ve never had a wholly original thought at all, and if I ever feel lonely, all I need to do is read.
fbroom's review against another edition
4.0
If you want to get an idea of what the culture was like or what people have talked about in the sixties and seventies then read Joan Didion. Just like Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Joan’s writing is pleasure. It is joy. I just enjoy reading her even though sometimes I find myself getting lost because I don’t know the main character or the main event she is discussing. There is this magic about the way she writes.
The first chapter California Republic takes us on a tour of the late 1960s and 1970s. Stories of her time living in Hollywood and later Malibu. Stories of events such as the Manson murder, visiting Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party, student strikes at San Francisco State university and visiting a recording session by the Doors. Essays about James Albert Pike, Water in California, The expensive and ridiculous California Governor mansion built by Reagan and The Getty.
The second chapter is about the women movement. The third chapter, Sojourns, contains essays about her time in Hawaii, movie making in Hollywood, building Malls, Bogota in Columbia and the Hoover Dam. The forth chapter is essays about her time living in Malibu.
The first chapter California Republic takes us on a tour of the late 1960s and 1970s. Stories of her time living in Hollywood and later Malibu. Stories of events such as the Manson murder, visiting Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party, student strikes at San Francisco State university and visiting a recording session by the Doors. Essays about James Albert Pike, Water in California, The expensive and ridiculous California Governor mansion built by Reagan and The Getty.
The second chapter is about the women movement. The third chapter, Sojourns, contains essays about her time in Hawaii, movie making in Hollywood, building Malls, Bogota in Columbia and the Hoover Dam. The forth chapter is essays about her time living in Malibu.
rileylovesbooks's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0