Rating: 5/5 Robert Atwan and Anne Fadiman (eds.), The Best American Essays 2003 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003). What I am loving most about these essay collections is the diversity. To use a Gumpism, “it’s like a box of chocolates.” There were a handful that I ended up skimming (toffee or peanut butter), and...
Rating: 5/5 Anne Fadiman (ed.), Rereadings (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). Well I’ve decided that Anne Fadiman is pretty awesome :) I’ve also decided that the “essay” as a genre is pretty awesome too. I don’t know why I’ve had so little exposure to it so far in my life, but there it is. I’m glad I found it...
Rating: 5/5 Anne Fadiman, At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007). Another delightful read. While not as intentionally hilarious as Ex Libris , it certainly has it’s guffaw-inducing moments. She’s a tremendous writer and succeeds well at creating vivid...
Rating: 5/5 Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998). I just finished reading the most wonderful book! It came up in one of the editing mailing lists I subscribe to. (I wish I could remember who recommended it!) It’s a series of essays by Anne Fadiman (someone...
Rating: 4/5 Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York: Basic Books, 1986). This book (revised again in 1996) is a collection of the columns Douglas Hofstadter wrote for Scientific American in 1981–83. The columns are grouped by topic and each is followed by a...
Rating: 5/5 Wendell Berry, Imagination in Place (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2010). I have read a fair bit of Wendell Berry lately, and I will soon be looking more closely at his fiction. This collection of essays is more autobiographical and is certainly more literary. The overall focus is on influence—how we...
Rating: 5/5 Wendell Berry, What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2010). I can’t say enough how much I enjoy Wendell Berry’s writing. At a technical level, his writing is beautiful. He uses plain language , and his arguments are clearly and logically laid out. At a content...
Rating: 5/5 Wendell Berry, Home Economics: Fourteen Essays by Wendell Berry (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987). One thing I love about editing is the opportunity to read so many different types of texts I would never normally pick up. Sometimes, even if the book I’m editing is not particularly interesting, I...