Nonfiction
Published 1974
A fucking awesome book on the wild triumphs and joys of the creeks and mountains. I’m pretty sure this book actually changed my outlook on the world. It’s full of ravishing insights and crazy anecdotes from the natural world. If you have any interests in plants, or insects, or wildlife in general, or in the human spirit, or in the Point of It All, then you should probably read this immediately.
Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
Fiction
Published 1925
I always kind of thought that reading Virginia Woolf's work would be tedious and awful, and probably just way over my head. Turns out I was completely wrong. Woolf is amazing.
Mrs. Dalloway follows a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an older woman in London, as she prepares for a party that night. It also moves through the lives of the people around her, and through everyone's past and present, in a beautifully and poetically strange way. The entire book takes place in one day - the novel is neatly organized by the regular ringing of Big Ben - but it's rich with many lifetimes of meaning. (Re-reading that sentence, I sound pretty obnoxious, but it's so true that I'm going to leave it in.)
I don’t know if I’ve ever read another book that inspired me so much to write, and write well. I wanted to read it aloud to everyone around me. It is a tribute to life. And somehow it still manages to be thoroughly entertaining.
Granted, Woolf's writing needs to be gotten used to. It's poetic writing, a little dense and a little flowery. I had to read this tiny novel in little chunks. Once I got into it, though, I was only reading slowly because I wanted to savor every word, not because I needed the time to make sense of it.
Published 1925
I always kind of thought that reading Virginia Woolf's work would be tedious and awful, and probably just way over my head. Turns out I was completely wrong. Woolf is amazing.
Mrs. Dalloway follows a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an older woman in London, as she prepares for a party that night. It also moves through the lives of the people around her, and through everyone's past and present, in a beautifully and poetically strange way. The entire book takes place in one day - the novel is neatly organized by the regular ringing of Big Ben - but it's rich with many lifetimes of meaning. (Re-reading that sentence, I sound pretty obnoxious, but it's so true that I'm going to leave it in.)
I don’t know if I’ve ever read another book that inspired me so much to write, and write well. I wanted to read it aloud to everyone around me. It is a tribute to life. And somehow it still manages to be thoroughly entertaining.
Granted, Woolf's writing needs to be gotten used to. It's poetic writing, a little dense and a little flowery. I had to read this tiny novel in little chunks. Once I got into it, though, I was only reading slowly because I wanted to savor every word, not because I needed the time to make sense of it.
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