Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Int booker award 2013To find OrderedOpening: EACH NEW DAY, when they come out from the far side of the barn, it is like the next act, or the start of an entirely new play.Studded throughout with black and white photographs.Hard to know how to rate this 32 page (that is mainly image filled) exercise in bovine observation. If I was a fellow contender for this prize I would probably be very miffed with the result.
This book is so gentle and lovely - her descriptions of the cows feel familiar and tap into every thought I've had when observing cows. I loved it.
Last night:"Check it out.""Oooh.""Lydia Davis. Looking at cows.""That must be the best thing in the whole world."This morning:"Goodbye. I love you.""I love you too. Have fun.""You're having a moment with Lydia Davis.""Yes. She's looking at cows."
"The third cow could not be bred because she would not get into the van to be taken to the bull. Then, after a few months, they wanted to take her to be slaughtered. But she would not get into the van to be taken to slaughter. So she is still there."
I like Davis' writing/work in general so even though this was just a simple and short piece about watching/observing cows, I enjoyed it too. It wasn't particularly inspirational/amazing, but it was written well enough. “The third cow could not be bred because she would not get into the van to be taken to the bull. Then, after a few months, they wanted to take her to be slaughtered. But she would not get into the van to be taken to slaughter. So she is still there.”This excerpt was taken from the...
This book is about the cows that live across the street from Lydia Davis. The cows do not stand for anything. They are not metaphors. They are cows.
Too short. Of course. ************(okay, that was a bit of a cop-out. I love short books and short reviews.)I liked that she just captured the serenity of cow-gazing. Gazing at cows, being gazed at by cows.It is all very in the moment, "mindfulness" I think is the current term. It was a literary equivalent of a prescriptive nature exposure -- being out 'in nature', such as a park etc., for even just a few minutes a day, is good for the mental health.It was a good and restful piece to read at lun...
i feel stupid i paid money for this
The front cover of this chapbook features a cow in a field, looking stolid and a little bit curious: ears wide apart and forward, one front hoof planted a little ahead of the other. The grass is green, and so are the trees behind it. The back cover is a continuation of the same picture, with another cow ambling off, away from the camera. There are black and white photos by Lydia Davis, Theo Cote, and Stephen Davis throughout the book; the titular cows appear alongside the text about them, and it...
This is a very strange, very little book about cows. I like cows. I like this book. 4 stars bc it's strange, about cows, little, somewhat insane, somewhat boring, oddly bold, and very precise.
The first time I heard about this little book was from a video on Youtube that's an artistic interpretation of a moment in the book. The video is enchanting and dreamlike. Then I purchased, Can't and Won't by Lydia Davis. I rushed through The Cows wanting to only consume the book. Terrible. I didn't experience The Cows at all. I've done some reading about slow reading and I was encouraged by a friend to slow down. I purchased the chapbook, The Cows which includes black and white photographs of
When a cute girl gives you Cows as a birthday present, it is likely appropriate to cook her a good steak the next time the two of you have dinner together.
Lydia Davis ruminates on ruminants. Sorry, couldn’t resist that. It is an accurate description of the chapbook however. Thin and in overly large print it reminds me in more than one way of one of Beckett’s late prose pieces although my copy of Worstward Ho probably has more words in it than this piece. In fact he could well have written it. He famously wrote a play where “nothing happens, twice.” Well, this is a book where very little happens other than three cows being observed and in the obser...
I read a blog where a Goodreads member was asking for recommendations re: short books to read (so she could fulfill her 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge). So many people recommended this book. When I also saw that the author won the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, I had to read it too.The author is looking out her window and seeing the nearby cows. She talks about what they look like and what they are doing over a period of days. It is very peaceful. You can read it and finish it while have...
Wholesome Minimalist Farm ContentThe Cows is a funny little book. Nothing happens. You won’t learn much of anything new. But there’s something wholesome and pure about Davis’ simple descriptions of three cows living near her rural home. Anytime the descriptions move towards dignifying or personifying the animals, Davis simply notes that “all these suggestions are false.” It’s these brief acknowledgements that lend some sense of time and place to Davis otherwise matter-of-fact writing. Earlier ge...
I found her observations rather pedestrian. She seems only aware of the unadorned facts of their activities and yet doesn't deal with them as a scientist might, seeking to learn something from the raw data. Nor does she respond as a poet might. I guess because she perceives the cows as boring she can only offer boring observations. Too bad because I think the cows offered more than that, if only as food for imaginative thought.