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Like if NPR wrote an essay collection. Tedious, boring, pretentious.1. No one cares about your book tours or piles of fan mail.2. Actually, Silence of the Lambs is a great film.3. Sorry, no, watching violent films doesn't make people more violent.4. Stop fetishizing native peoples and cultures.
This is the first of Kingsolver's books that I read, and it's still my favorite, albeit that it's a collection of non-fiction essays. Maybe part of the reason is that I was also living in Tucson when I read it, so the things she had to say about life in that part of Arizona resonated with me. Beyond that, though, I just love the way she uses words - she writes lyrically.
I try not to do this often, but in this case, the New York Times Book Review review on the back of my paperback edition, really says everything about these 25 essays by Barbara Kingsolver that you need to know:Kingsolver's essays should be savored like quiet afternoons with a friend. ...She speaks in a language rich with music and replete with good sense."Couldn't have said it better myself.An enormously honest and personal collection of essays. If you like any of Kingsolver's books, I'm sure yo...
From the title essay: Embrace your own biology. Don't beat yourself up for acting like the human animal that you are.The rest of the essays: I laughed out loud more times than I can say, and I felt more connected to humanity as I read them. This is a book I go back to and re-read over and over because of that. I don't always agree with everything she says, but the essays always make me think and evaluate my own beliefs, biases, prejudices, actions.
I read this collection of essays years ago, and remember how thought provoking I found them. Barbara Kingsolver is, of course an excellent writer; her fiction is beautiful. The great thing about High Tide in Tuscon is actually getting a glimpse of what's inside this writer's head - the everyday things as well as the grand. It's a pretty well rounded combination of essays that come across simply as "this is what I think now" or "this is what I've been thinking about lately" - in Kingsolver's voic...
This book of essays was perfect for our monthly library genre circle and it was a perfect match for me. Kingsolver covered all areas in which I have a great interest in; parenting, human rights, environment, and nature. Every story spoke to me, the words flowed so smoothly and with such great detail. I truly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to trying other Kingsolver works.
Barbara Kingsolver was one of a few novelists I fell head-over-heels in love with as a pre-teen; that is, an AUTHOR I vowed to follow, instead of a book or series. At this point it feels, as I'm sure it does for many of her fans, like I know her. That's part of her appeal, of course, and she cultivates her personability well and visibly. In coming to this collection of essays, released almost twenty years ago, I see her writer-wheels turning more visibly than ever. (Essays are really good for th...
Published in 1995, this book is a compilation of Barbara Kingsolver’s previously published essays, along with new material. The essays focus on family life, travels, nature, and environmentalism. It is named for a hermit crab that inadvertently ended up at her home in Tucson, Arizona. I enjoyed the structure of this book. It is easy to read one essay at each sitting. Each essay addresses an entirely different topic. I found the essays well-written, analytical, diverse, and educational. She eloqu...
It's been a while since I read these essays, and it's time for me to read them again. I remember, when I first read this book, it was on a horrible trip back to Cork, from San Francisco. My father was in hospital, having suffered some kind of major neurological setback, one of many on the long decline to his death in late 2002. Things were fairly touch and go, and there was a lot of waiting in hospital corridors. I was enormously grateful for the sanity and calm of Kingsolver's writing - this bo...
I really enjoyed this book. Like "Small Wonder" it was a book of essays, but less militantly environmental. My favorite of the essays was "Jabberwocky" where she discusses art as politics. As in her other books her use of language is phenomenal and the book provided excellent thoughts and quotes. I would definitely recommend this book.
Her best book ever, and yes, I'm including The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible in that assessment. Truly wonderful, thoughtful, beautifully written essays on many different topics, including the hermit crab that hitched a ride home from the beach, a visit to an empty missile silo, and the best description of an author book tour ever put down on paper.
I read Prodigal Summer (last year, I think it was) and enjoyed it enormously. I really like the way Kingsolver uses words. So when another of her books was on offer (through Reading Seals, my book discussion group, just to borrow) I grabbed it. This book is a collection of essays. She took pieces she’d written for magazines and revised them, wrote a few more, and put them together in chapters ordered to be read as a book (i.e. front to back – acknowledging that some people don’t read books that
I stole this from my mother-in-law about a year ago. Now I can finally give it back, but it's one of those that I liked so much that I'd rather just keep it. I haven't read anything by Kingsolver before so I have no idea how this compares to her other work, but it's a collection of shortish essays. Some are pretty funny, most are poignant, and all made me long for her writer's life. Time to get on that.
I love love love Kingsolver, and I think I love this collection of nonfiction essays even better than any of her fiction. It's written in the style of Annie Dillard, as a layperson who is interested in observation of the natural world and then exploration of underlying scientific principles. It's a beautifully written book and I reread it every several years.
Beautiful essays on diverse topics with an elegant writing style. We can learn the author’s insight on a day-today incidence. Starting from nature, environment to war and politics it covers diverse topics. Touched by the intricate observations and the way author connects different topics. Read this if you have interest in science, biology & evolution.
The book is a collection of essays on various autobiographical topics. It is a little bit of Thoreau, though less dense, and a little bit more of Dillard, but more straightforward.Kingsolver celebrates our animal nature. She refers to the “silly egghead of a species that we are” and goes on to say that “We tap our toes to chaste love songs about the silvery moon without recognizing them as hymns to copulation. We can dress up our drives, put them in three-piece suits or ballet slippers, but stil...
In this collection of essays, rewritten and expanded versions, in many cases, from what has been previously published in various magazines, Kingsolver's skill and talent as an essayist shimmers with brilliance and sheer entertainment. Topics have wide range, covering nature, art, values and ethics, human nature and its foibles, politics and travels. Whether she is pondering the biological clocks of hermit crabs or espousing her views on violence and objectification of women on the silver screen,...
Every so often, I become so enamored with an authorial voice that the writer in question could present to me the most unpalatable or trite subject matter and I’d ravenously lap it up, immediately yearning for more. Kingsolver’s writing falls under this umbrella. Even when I find her boomer progressivism eye-rollingly cliche, I’m willing to go along for the ride because her prose is just. that. beautiful. I found myself flinching when her early 90s liberal sensibilities caused her to skirt around...
There are some beautiful sentences in this book, especially about nature and Kingsolver's interior space. Essays about the environment, personal responsibility, child raising, feminism, and compassion resonated with my own aesthetic or made me reevaluate my opinions. Nonetheless, Kingsolver comes off abrasive at times and unchecked at others. For example, she writes about how she doesn't draw upon friends or family to create characters in her books (because her imagination is so much more expans...
I don't give many 5 stars but this book was really great. Barbara Kinsolver put together a bunch of her essays from various magazine and paper publications to create a book in which one really feels connected to the author. Kingsolver is known for her fiction works and she even discusses how many of her fans write to her thinking that they are based on truths even though they aren't. What this book allows for those fans is a real glimpse into her life and her thoughts on things from raising a he...