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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
This took me a while to get into but I liked it in the end. I bought it at dog eared books in San Francisco and I wish I had read more of it before/during my visit to California. It’s really interesting, and I especially liked the chapters about the underbelly of the military contracts paying for everything in the California suburbs. I also liked the stories about pioneers, I feel like not many pioneer narratives are that unromantic. The book was was pretty meandering and I never really knew where we were headed next, so even though it is a pretty short book it took me three weeks to read. It was also my first Joan Didion and I wonder if it’s more appealing to people familiar with her style and biography.
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
this is more like a 3.5 stars for me. i liked this better than i did the white album by her because the writing style seemed to flow better and the end of each chapter felt more cohesive with a message she was attempting to communicate. the first part and i think the few chapters about the pioneers ended up being quite interesting since she does cast a critical eye on the mythos of the pioneers and manifest destiny, which is very much her history, and i appreciate that. it started to lose me as i trudged on. you could really tell she was a reporter from her general writing style, the research invested into the topics she's writing on, and the kind of narrative she beings to form, which all culminate in a mostly straightforward and semi-concise manner. she gets to point a to b, mapping out her stories. i wish the last part packed more of an emotional punch. it was almost surprising it didn't when she was discussing the death of her mother. i remember one line from that part in which she says that when her father died, she kept moving, but when her mother died, everything stopped. it had to. that was a little more of the note i longed for, though i understand that was never really her aim with this book as she tried to throw into question her california heritage and all that might encompass.
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Though I am not from CA and moved here as an adult, I could still identify with a lot here. I love her writing style. I echo the critique about not really addressing the role of people of color in CA, but it also wasn't a long book...
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
there’s so much life and beauty injected into the objectively boring parts of this book and the personal bits are incred. also possibly the only book i’ll ever read that discusses bonfante gardens!