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bridgekey's review against another edition
2.0
Wealthy inverse snowbird writes auto biography about paying people to build a beautiful house in a beautiful place
Nice writing, not very relatable
Nice writing, not very relatable
jbarr5's review
4.0
bird cloud by annie proulx. the highlights of this book are the building from scratch of a house
in wyoming. the full process of permits, etc and how tough it was to even find the right people to
build it. the nature and background of who settled there first was good. the nature really enthalled
me to keep reading, such beautiful things in life. this sets me up to read the wyoming series that i
have put together in various media forms for the upcoming week. should be fun to sit back and read.
in wyoming. the full process of permits, etc and how tough it was to even find the right people to
build it. the nature and background of who settled there first was good. the nature really enthalled
me to keep reading, such beautiful things in life. this sets me up to read the wyoming series that i
have put together in various media forms for the upcoming week. should be fun to sit back and read.
jbarr5's review against another edition
The higlights of this book are the building from scratch of a house in Wyoming. The full process of permtis, etc andhow tough it was to even find the right people to build it. The nature and background of who settled there first was good. The nature really enthralled me to keep reading, such beautiful things in life. This sets me to read the Wyoming series that I have put together in various media forms from the upcoming week, should be fun to sit back and read.
jdintr's review against another edition
This book really picked up in the final third, as Proulx went into the geology, the archaeology and the wonder of Bird Cloud (a family of buzzards moved into my own property soon after I finished the book, and I appreciate them much more having read it). The details of the design and building of the estate weren't so interesting.
nancyinoregon's review against another edition
3.0
Every time I write a long and thoughtful review, Goodreads seems to find a way to lose it before it's saved. So a shorter review.
I have many similarities to the author's experience. I bought 480 acres in a remote location, but with an existing "shack" that I wanted to restore to its former glory--and so I did, after four years and three contractors. Every time I shook my head at some of the decisions that Proulx made, I have to remind myself that I am a far different person now, having had my own experiences.
I only discovered Annie Proulx's writing recently and am floored by her turns of phrase several times a minute. But the only places in this book that her writing shines through are when she's talking about the wildlife. In the audio version, the narrator uses uptalk (raising the voice at the ends of sentences and phrases), which gives the writing a tentative quality and was very irritating. The author read the first chapter, and I wish she'd read the whole book.
Glad I read it, not sure I'd recommend it.
I have many similarities to the author's experience. I bought 480 acres in a remote location, but with an existing "shack" that I wanted to restore to its former glory--and so I did, after four years and three contractors. Every time I shook my head at some of the decisions that Proulx made, I have to remind myself that I am a far different person now, having had my own experiences.
I only discovered Annie Proulx's writing recently and am floored by her turns of phrase several times a minute. But the only places in this book that her writing shines through are when she's talking about the wildlife. In the audio version, the narrator uses uptalk (raising the voice at the ends of sentences and phrases), which gives the writing a tentative quality and was very irritating. The author read the first chapter, and I wish she'd read the whole book.
Glad I read it, not sure I'd recommend it.
martydah's review against another edition
2.0
This was not one of my favorite Proulx works, nor was it a very engaging read overall. Parts of it were, particularly the chapters devoted to the Bird Cloud, Wyoming area's history, Proulx's own observations on the local avian inhabitants of the area, and her own, briefly described, family history. The chapters on the actual building of her house were tedious, but perhaps that is appropriate since building a domicile is naturally tedious and frustrating.
elizadunaway's review against another edition
2.0
This book is nicely written like every Proulx book but boring. Its basically the author struggling and figuring out how to build a house + descriptions of weather in Wyoming. Why is this a book?
jennyshank's review against another edition
3.0
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/01/26/2796233/annie-proulx-tells-of-her-vivid.html
Annie Proulx tells of her vivid life on a 'Cloud'
Posted Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011 0 Comments Print Share Share Reprints
By Jenny Shank
Special to the Star-Telegram
If there's any writer with a life and mind intriguing enough to merit a memoir, it's Annie Proulx, who didn't publish her first book of fiction until she was in her 50s, then quickly won just about every award available to an American writer. Proulx's geographical-chameleon nature is unusual for a writer whose work is so linked to landscape -- she grew up in New England, spent her early adulthood there and set the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning novel The Shipping News in Newfoundland. Later, she moved to Wyoming, where she set three quirky and often breathtaking short-story collections, filled with details and observations that seem like they'd only occur to a lifelong Westerner.
Readers will come to Bird Cloud, Proulx's first book of autobiographical nonfiction, hoping to glean some insights about what makes this exceptional writer tick, and they'll find some answers, but so will they be left with perhaps more questions from this beautifully written but somewhat frustrating book. Bird Cloud encompasses a bit of introspection and family history, an account of the trials of building Proulx's dream house in Wyoming, notes on wildlife, and a discussion of human and natural history of the area.
The story opens in March 2005, with Proulx's reflections on the geographical features of the 640 acres of Wyoming land she had recently purchased from the Nature Conservancy, a tract she named Bird Cloud. The extraordinary beauty of this spot drew Proulx in; it features a dramatic, 400-foot cliff, under which the North Platte River flows, attracting a riot of bird activity. She hopes to build a house where she can live alone with nature and her beloved library of history and science books. She finds out that Bird Cloud is not ideally suited to human habitation, especially in the winter, but she plunges ahead with the project.
"Well do I know my own character negatives," she writes, "bossy, impatient, reclusively shy, short-tempered, single-minded. The good parts are harder to see, but I suppose a fair dose of sympathy and even compassion is there, a by-product of the writer's imagination. I can and do put myself in others' shoes constantly. Observational skills, quick decisions (not a few bad ones), and a tendency to overreach, to stretch comprehension and try difficult things are part of who I am."
Bird Cloud next skips to Proulx's early life -- born in 1935, she moved with her family incessantly while her father, a French Canadian, searched for better jobs in his quest for respectability. Proulx delves into her family genealogy, the most interesting aspect of which is the conclusion a reader can draw from it: Through her success, Proulx has completed her father's journey out of generations of poverty toward wealth and cultural prestige. After a peripatetic childhood and adulthood, Proulx has earned the grand, expensive house that she sets out to build in the next part of the book. Whether this is of interest probably depends on how well the reader is faring in the current economy.
The blow-by-blow of the building of Proulx's house is the most entertaining part. In her fiction, Proulx writes incisively about distinctive local characters, and the workmen in Bird Cloud are vivid. There's Harry Teague, the Aspen-based architect she hires to design the house, and "the James gang," a group of brothers Proulx finds after trial and error with less reliable workmen, who are tireless perfectionists and come as close to achieving Proulx's dream as anybody could.
Although Proulx's sympathies in her fiction usually lie with Wyoming natives like the James gang, we learn that Proulx, in her quest for the perfect Japanese soak tub, solar panels and Brazilian floor tiles, might be more like the outsiders she poked fun at in her story Man Crawling Out of Trees, in which a New York couple buys a home in Wyoming, one of the many pine-log "estates" that resulted when ranch widows "dumped the cows and called up the real estate brokers, who sketched out thirty-five-acre ranchettes." The couple proceed to lavishly outfit their new home, as does Proulx.
Proulx must move into the house before the work is completed, which aggravates her and disrupts her writing. Gradually the construction finishes, but she realizes the problems of the site she selected. She concludes, "I had to face the fact that no matter how much I loved the place it was not, and never could be, the final home of which I had dreamed."
But wait -- did Proulx sell the house after all this? (She told the Los Angeles Times in 2008 that she was moving to New Mexico.) Will she set any more fiction in Wyoming? And how exactly does she write her fiction? Although Proulx's memoir preserves her mystery on these and other points, fans of her prose and nature descriptions will find much to savor in Bird Cloud, at least until Proulx's next work of fiction appears.
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/01/26/2796233/annie-proulx-tells-of-her-vivid.html#tvg#ixzz1Cd4lNHr7
Annie Proulx tells of her vivid life on a 'Cloud'
Posted Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011 0 Comments Print Share Share Reprints
By Jenny Shank
Special to the Star-Telegram
If there's any writer with a life and mind intriguing enough to merit a memoir, it's Annie Proulx, who didn't publish her first book of fiction until she was in her 50s, then quickly won just about every award available to an American writer. Proulx's geographical-chameleon nature is unusual for a writer whose work is so linked to landscape -- she grew up in New England, spent her early adulthood there and set the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning novel The Shipping News in Newfoundland. Later, she moved to Wyoming, where she set three quirky and often breathtaking short-story collections, filled with details and observations that seem like they'd only occur to a lifelong Westerner.
Readers will come to Bird Cloud, Proulx's first book of autobiographical nonfiction, hoping to glean some insights about what makes this exceptional writer tick, and they'll find some answers, but so will they be left with perhaps more questions from this beautifully written but somewhat frustrating book. Bird Cloud encompasses a bit of introspection and family history, an account of the trials of building Proulx's dream house in Wyoming, notes on wildlife, and a discussion of human and natural history of the area.
The story opens in March 2005, with Proulx's reflections on the geographical features of the 640 acres of Wyoming land she had recently purchased from the Nature Conservancy, a tract she named Bird Cloud. The extraordinary beauty of this spot drew Proulx in; it features a dramatic, 400-foot cliff, under which the North Platte River flows, attracting a riot of bird activity. She hopes to build a house where she can live alone with nature and her beloved library of history and science books. She finds out that Bird Cloud is not ideally suited to human habitation, especially in the winter, but she plunges ahead with the project.
"Well do I know my own character negatives," she writes, "bossy, impatient, reclusively shy, short-tempered, single-minded. The good parts are harder to see, but I suppose a fair dose of sympathy and even compassion is there, a by-product of the writer's imagination. I can and do put myself in others' shoes constantly. Observational skills, quick decisions (not a few bad ones), and a tendency to overreach, to stretch comprehension and try difficult things are part of who I am."
Bird Cloud next skips to Proulx's early life -- born in 1935, she moved with her family incessantly while her father, a French Canadian, searched for better jobs in his quest for respectability. Proulx delves into her family genealogy, the most interesting aspect of which is the conclusion a reader can draw from it: Through her success, Proulx has completed her father's journey out of generations of poverty toward wealth and cultural prestige. After a peripatetic childhood and adulthood, Proulx has earned the grand, expensive house that she sets out to build in the next part of the book. Whether this is of interest probably depends on how well the reader is faring in the current economy.
The blow-by-blow of the building of Proulx's house is the most entertaining part. In her fiction, Proulx writes incisively about distinctive local characters, and the workmen in Bird Cloud are vivid. There's Harry Teague, the Aspen-based architect she hires to design the house, and "the James gang," a group of brothers Proulx finds after trial and error with less reliable workmen, who are tireless perfectionists and come as close to achieving Proulx's dream as anybody could.
Although Proulx's sympathies in her fiction usually lie with Wyoming natives like the James gang, we learn that Proulx, in her quest for the perfect Japanese soak tub, solar panels and Brazilian floor tiles, might be more like the outsiders she poked fun at in her story Man Crawling Out of Trees, in which a New York couple buys a home in Wyoming, one of the many pine-log "estates" that resulted when ranch widows "dumped the cows and called up the real estate brokers, who sketched out thirty-five-acre ranchettes." The couple proceed to lavishly outfit their new home, as does Proulx.
Proulx must move into the house before the work is completed, which aggravates her and disrupts her writing. Gradually the construction finishes, but she realizes the problems of the site she selected. She concludes, "I had to face the fact that no matter how much I loved the place it was not, and never could be, the final home of which I had dreamed."
But wait -- did Proulx sell the house after all this? (She told the Los Angeles Times in 2008 that she was moving to New Mexico.) Will she set any more fiction in Wyoming? And how exactly does she write her fiction? Although Proulx's memoir preserves her mystery on these and other points, fans of her prose and nature descriptions will find much to savor in Bird Cloud, at least until Proulx's next work of fiction appears.
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/01/26/2796233/annie-proulx-tells-of-her-vivid.html#tvg#ixzz1Cd4lNHr7
an_enthusiastic_reader's review against another edition
3.0
I would have given this 3.5, because it's Proulx and I adore her fiction, but after the first few riveting chapters, the book seemed to lose some of its focus and rhythm. The memoir, while cobbled around the story of building her not-dream house, missed for me the warmth of real living relationships, always a balm when talking about the scoundrels of history who made Wyoming what it appears to be today.