Welcome to Litsy!

#weirdwords #weirdwordwednesday @CBee

I was so excited when I stumbled across this word! Especially in this context! There was a stint of my childhood when I was raised by what I lazily and somewhat jokingly refer to as “the hippie parents” because I never had anything better to call them, but it was actually a congeries of families.

My first #bookspin of the year is Didion‘s first nonfiction essay collection. In the preface she describes her mindset when writing the title piece: “It was the first time I had dealt directly and flatly with the evidence of atomization, the proof that things fall apart.” Most of the pieces here were published elsewhere first but selected by Didion for this because in her mind they relate to that. I found looking for those connections fascinating.

THIS BOOK IS CALLED Slouching Towards Bethlehem because for several years now certain lines from the Yeats poem which appears two pages back have reverberated in my inner ear as if they were surgically implanted there. #firstlinefridays @ShyBookOwl

I think this really starts in Didion‘s preface, not her first essay, so this is the first line of that.

April #WrapUp

Another great reading month. Best of the month were Lessons in Chemistry and Slouching Towards Bethlehem and of course By the Shores of Silver lake is a favorite.

More like Slogging Towards Bethlehem.
I would have DNF'd this book but I got Reading Goals to achieve and this was a relatively short book.
A wildly pretentious and dull one at that.
#NotForMe

This book aged better than I expected. Most of the stories are rather grim yet I didn't feel grim after I finished. Lots of imagery included of dry California cities bordering on deserts. This picture seemed apt. 🔥

📸 Stock photo

A few #independetwomen who were trailblazers: Joan Didion, Tove Jansson, Susan Sontag, Toni Morrison, Kim Gordon, Michelle Yeoh.

Feels like dropping into the 1960s. Fascinating essays so far.

A collection of essays and reflections on American life in the 1960s.

Counter Culture ✨ Nostalgic ✨ California

This book is a collection of articles written by Joan Didion during the 1960s. Being a Boomer, I could relate to a lot of her observations and anyone born after 1980 can read this book and get a good sense of what life in the US was like during those years. The writing is excellent, I can‘t say that enough. Didion had a wonderful style and incisiveness about her writing. Her voice was wholly her own. Five stars.

Another winner from @vivastory ‘s #NYWD22 list! Is there anyone more quintessentially California than Didion? In these, she mostly reflects on her state and the people in it. I loved her essay about Alcatraz. The ones about John Wayne and Sacramento are excellent, too. The longer title essay about the hippie movement in the Haight was interesting. 5 year olds on acid at “high kindergarten.” Wtf hippies? Keaton is the perfect narrator for this.

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
@Eggs

14. #Weremember Joan Didion

I 💙 Lit Hub. I feel like my tote bag game really leveled up with the Riverhead Books tote & now this.

Loved the personal essays and about the different places she had visited or lived in.

📖

RIP, wise dear, and astute lady.

I read Didion's essay collection a few weeks after my father passed away 7 months ago. This quote, from this amazing book, has remained an important one since I first read it. This book came along right when I needed it. What an icon. What a loss. 💔

Yeats and the widening gyre and the falcon…there were years…they seem so long ago…
I took so many notes when I first read this one. Joan Didion, you will be missed. Thank you. Thank you. RIP.

I was introduced to Didion when I was assigned to read Slouching Towards Bethlehem in my Literature of the American West class in college. I subsequently devoured The White Album. This might be the impetus for me to explore her fiction finally.

RIP Joan Didion
12/5/34 - 12/23/21
😢

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This is a collection of her essays and her columns from the 1960s, mostly set in California. Didion has a clear, quick writing style. The pieces were beautifully written, but not compelling in a way that I couldn‘t put it down (or stop listening). Diane Keaton‘s narration was off in a few places (like calling San Bernardino “San Berdino”?) and that was distracting.

I forgot to update Litsy when I completed this book a month ago! This is a good list of essays with interesting takes by Joan Didion. As a non-American some of it did not resonate with me, as this book is a very America-centric one. But still a good read into an important journalist. Full review in my blog, www.anushareflects.com

It felt like Joan took me on a state of the art VR time travel trip to the 1960‘s. Adorned in my flower crown, long puffed sleeves, thrown up peace signs, frayed bell-bottomed jeans, sandals and all. The pragmatic writing style invokes all of your senses. It elicits strong emotions, weaving a beautifully shattered/non-linear narrative that is honest, brilliant and only cemented the fact that she has become one of my favorite authors of all time.

This was the first book that came to mind for the #CuriousCovers #pattern prompt. Good book, great cover.

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs

Didion's book, published in 1968, is a timeless & extraordinary work that is both far ranging in tone & concern. It opens with “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,“ a longform true crime article published the year after Capote's “In Cold Blood.“ In Didion's essay, the wife of the potential victim is charged with his murder, regardless of the circumstantial evidence. Topics range from the surprising wealth of Joan Baez to the heartbreaking title👇

Gift from husband! 🤩

What can I say, Mrs. Petkuss? I'm not the greatest with directions!!

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.

This interview is a mood & it's perfect
time.com/5932127/joan-didion-let-me-tell-you-what-i-mean

I‘m glad that this was a book of essays. I really enjoyed it but I sometimes felt like I got lost in what the narrative was supposed to be and definitely came across words I had never heard of before. But what I loved about it was it was so profound and there would be a sentence or a paragraph that spoke to me and I knew exactly what it was supposed to mean because I have felt that way too.

“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some pre-sentiment of loss”

Some of the essays were excellent; others meh. Overall I enjoyed maybe half of them. "On Keeping a Notebook" and "On Self-Respect" were my favorites. I do plan on reading more Joan Didion in the future.

It was very easy to sit at the bar in, say, La Scala in Beverly Hills, or Ernie's in San Francisco, and to share in the pervasive delusion that California is only five hours from New York by air. The truth is that La Scala and Ernie's are only five hours from New York by air. California is somewhere else. #amreading #bookworm #bibliophile #bookish #booknerdigans #tsundoku #greatreads #readmorebooks #raconteuse #coolgirlsread

⭐⭐⭐⭐ for this collection of essays. It really brings you into the California valley of the 1960's. I will be reading more from Joan.

It is all I read this eventful week. I had a corporate auditor visit the hotel for a few days to conduct his routine surprise visit. Watson turned 5. Celebrated my cousin's milestone birthday. Found out my 84 year old grandma found an old BF via Facebook and they're getting married.
#dogsoflitsy

Book 48 of 2020
#ebook #prime

1. The Count of Monte Cristo, The Resisters, My Brilliant Friend.. and so many others that I keep starting and stopping 🙄
2. The Kiss Quotient, The Rosie Project, The Wedding Party (all of the books)
3. From Scratch
#werkendreads

Does anyone match their bookmarks to their books, either in color or mood? Today I'll start this one for a short mental break at lunchtime during the workday - with the help of Dorothy Sbornack.

As usual with me and Didion, I either loved the essay I was reading or skimmed to get to the end.

This collection was about 50/50 for me.

12-12-19: My 102nd finished book of 2019! #slouchingtowardsbethlehem #joandidion 👍🏼📖#️⃣1️⃣0️⃣2️⃣

The pieces in this collection were written in the mid 60's and focus largely on Didion's experiences in California. There is some fascinating stuff in them, particularly the eponymous essay which describes her meetings with San Fransisco's counter-culture. I also enjoyed the essay on Hawaii which provided a bit of background to her novel Democracy. Her writing is as stylish as ever but I was in 2 minds about some of her attitudes.

I don't believe in numerology, but given it's Joan Didion writing, this (from 1967) is spooky

Joan Didion was once considered a radical writer for turning standard syntax on its ear and adding her personal reflections and stories into her articles. My, how times have changed! It‘s nice to hear that Joan, now 84, is still writing and rocking the boat. 🙌🏻 Her essay “On Self-Respect” moved me most. And who better than Diane Keaton to deliver Didion‘s profound thoughts?

Love.

One of the bargains offered by Early Bird Books today. I think it‘s going on my TBR.

My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

I recently read “On Keeping a Notebook.” I liked Didion‘s take on notebooks, but I struggle to keep one, only junk journaling when I‘m particularly stressed out. Do you keep a notebook, journal, or diary?

DAY 3: Joan Didion wrote numerous journalistic essays about 60s and 70s America, many based in #California. These were my first two Didion books and I love her conversational style. She‘s a phenomenal nonfiction writer.

#NoFemmeber

#California #NoFemmeber @Cinfhen I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought of this first. It's on my TBR- I enjoy getting immersed in historical times and places that I know little about. The song is completely different: more stream-of-consciousness and poetry than journalism. In addition to creating three amazing albums, EMA also introduced me to William Gibson: several songs on her 2nd album reference Neuromancer, with an internet-age twist.