I know James is sitting across the room from my typing out his reasons for you to read this book, but here are mine, as well.
I'm usually a fast reader. A really, freakishly fast reader. But this book took me weeks to get through. I took it paragraphs, sentences at a time, because *every single sentence* is so carefully crafted, so full, so rich, that it's like reading the literary equivalent of a 88% cocoa chocolate bar. You can only take a square at a time, and even of those squares, a bite at a time, and just let it melt all over your tongue.
I can't really tell you what it's about, because it doesn't really have a narrative plot. Annie Dillard spent a while (a year?) at Tinker Creek, VA, and she wrote about it. But of course, it's more than that.
She's my absolute favorite writer, and if I could ever get over myself enough to actually do something about the fact that I want to be a writer more than anything, I would say she was my biggest influence. :)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-01-05 07:28 am (UTC)I'm usually a fast reader. A really, freakishly fast reader. But this book took me weeks to get through. I took it paragraphs, sentences at a time, because *every single sentence* is so carefully crafted, so full, so rich, that it's like reading the literary equivalent of a 88% cocoa chocolate bar. You can only take a square at a time, and even of those squares, a bite at a time, and just let it melt all over your tongue.
I can't really tell you what it's about, because it doesn't really have a narrative plot. Annie Dillard spent a while (a year?) at Tinker Creek, VA, and she wrote about it. But of course, it's more than that.
She's my absolute favorite writer, and if I could ever get over myself enough to actually do something about the fact that I want to be a writer more than anything, I would say she was my biggest influence. :)