The White Album | 
so-soI returned to my third reading of Joan Didion with The White Album. So far of the other two i had read I loved Year of Magical Thinking & so-so‘d Slouching Toward Bethlehem. I guess my third read also ended up so-so. I really enjoyed a few essays but for the majority this collection underwhelmed me. I was shocked at her essay deriding the women‘s movement & she certainly fell from grace in my eyes. Overall some essays were great but mostly not
pickI've had the desire to commemorate Joan Didion and picked up The White Album, which contains one of my favorite essays and a couple of my absolute favorite quotes. There's just something about the flow of her sentences and how she stylized the ordinary that draws me in and speaks to me as I linger in the pages.
From The Paris Review interview RIP Joan Didion
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live." – The White Album (1979)
Feeling this loss today of such a talented writer. This is one of my favorite quotes (as evidenced by my tagline). I've scribbled so many quotes and thoughts in my journals from Didion's writings over the years.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/23/joan-didion-in-her-own-words-23-of...
so-so1. a) France especially the south so beautiful & calming to me, Riviera a close 2nd, Paris 3rd. b) London c) Samoa despite the stomach bug it was 1 of the more relaxing holidays I‘ve had. 2. Bath, book & a big glass of Shiraz usually has to be topped up by my love. 3. I think the tagged book. 4. Today I‘m grateful for working from home so I‘m better organised for my evil step daughter‘s 11th b‘day and away from covid. #wonderouswendesday @Eggs
pick“We tell ourselves stories in order to live“
Didion's second essay collection ranges farther afield than Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Didion's broad interests are occasionally belied by the brevity of a few pieces. Yet, they are almost always salvaged by her psychological perceptiveness, lyrical prose. & the sense of being both a part of the zeitgeist as well as a stranger in a strange land (to borrow Heinlein's title). While not as consistently👇
so-soLove the bang it started off with but it has since mellowed in the middle. I always have a second hand book to read in the spa and sauna. I have started my Easter holidays early!
pickWhat a revelation! I started reading the tagged book in the spa yesterday & loved it instantly. These 📚 are from the book exchange at my local shopping centre. I visited it 2xs this week. I love me a mag. I don‘t really care if it‘s an old 1 either. The Rainforest 📖 interested me as I studied anthropology at uni 20 yrs ago but never did anything with that degree. The Virginia Andrews book I took due to a ❤️ of the 💐 in the attic series in yr 7.
pickWhenever you have collected essays, there are a fair amount of hits and misses, and The White Album is no different. Didion tackles more California topics, but also a bit about The Black Panthers, musicians of the 60's, women, & travel. The standouts were those that evoke a time & place more than a larger issue: Many Mansions, In The Islands, On The Mall, and Quiet Days in Malibu.
@Clwojick @Meaw_catlady #readyoursign ♐ prompts 2, 12, & 15
#LibraryHaul
#UpNext
*I may be the only person around who has not watched Game of Thrones...so Season One...
*Re-reading Paper Girls 1 & 2 so I can read the copy of #3 I own and beyond...
*A little Joan Didion to end my #NFFall and a thriller that has been on my TBR...
An ambitious end to 2019!
Went to see the new Tarantino on Sunday, and am now really itching for a reread of the tagged book, mainly for the titular essay which is mostly about the Manson murders. I highly recommend the movie for anyone interested in the time period or is obsessed with the Manson murders. This movie was definitely an outlier in Tarantino‘s oeuvre, so if you aren‘t a fan of the violence and language in his other films you might actually like this one!
pickAs in any book of essays I ended up skimming some, but the ones that caught me really drew me in. My particular favorites were on Hawaii, migraines, Malibu, okeefe, and relationships. She has a particular way of capturing human experience and is a keen observer of culture and the way people think. Captures life in California and Hawaii I‘m the 1960s. #1979 #publishedin1979 #40thbdaychallenge
Big day at work today, so trying to calm myself by reading. Loving Didion‘s discussion of Georgia O‘Keeffe.
I think this is the last quote I had highlighted. So many good ones!
"What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace."
pickA book of essays in which I either really enjoyed the subject matter or was bored to the point of skimmimg.
The book still gets a "pick" from me due to the number of quotable quotes.
"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image."
so-soI definitely admire the experiences Joan Didion has had in her life and all of the things she has seen and been through. I just found this to be a bit slow moving and dry. She also jumped around a lot. Interesting life, but the story is a bit slow.
Thinking of California and how Joan described wildfire: “Horses caught fire and were shot on the beach, birds exploded in the air.”
Link https://deadline.com/2018/11/few-words-joan-didion-how-report-malibu-fire-120249...
#littleredcorvette OK, so it‘s not red , Joan‘s was Daytona Yellow.The right writer in the right place at the right time to own this car. The White Album essay calls the L.A. freeway system the only secular communion Los Angeles has.As to the song, It always makes me smile,dance , and I love to sing along.Double Hibiscus from my backyard.
#Princeofjuly
pickMy first Didion, and holy socks you guys, this lady can write an essay. Her sentences flow like music, and her topics are fascinating, even at their most mundane. I'm so excited to read more. ❤️
Some recent finds at one of my favorite local shops, Nice Price Books & Records. The Springsteen box set comes with a book of lyrics and photographs so I‘m lopping it in with the pile. Not pictured, the Raising Arizona dvd I scored for $2. Good haul.
I can‘t get enough of Joan Didion lately. My husband is at a friend‘s bachelor party, so I‘m partying my way by finally getting around to this.
If I could be any writer, I think I‘d want to be Joan Didion when she wrote The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
pick“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
I love the ease with which Joan Didion writes, or at least it appears as such. It‘s borderline conversational yet flawless. Here, she presents us mostly with snippets of 60s and 70s America. Such a fascinating time period. My favorite essay was the Georgia O‘Keefe. I‘m a fan. This was only my second Didion and I can‘t wait to read more.
Some love for women in music and the women writing about music.
#soundsofthen
#MarchintoOz @Cinfhen @Lizpixie
Printed in 1979, this book's essays cover 1968-1978 during her time in California as a young writer/journalist. Her political neutrality and straightforward style is appealing.
so-soIf I listened to the whole audiobook, it‘s due in part to Susan Varon‘s spare, dry yet dreamy narration. White Album can be full of white noise due in part to the book magnifying certain cross-sections of society from bygone times, signifying nothing to contemporary readers. Her strongest essay is a comment on the Women‘s Movement, which alone is worth reading. #JoanDidion #TheWhiteAlbum #Essays
bailedMy first Didion and I don't want to say it's my last, but this one just didn't work for me. The essays just plain didn't interest me.
Learned a new word today. It's always exciting to come across something I haven't seen before!
A few #minimalistcovers from my E-reader #jubilantjuly @RealLifeReading
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
~Joan Didion, The White Album
Beach Read ??
#books #bookish #joandidion #beachread #reader #currentlyreading
I finally dragged myself through the rest of this book, skimming some unbearable parts, and my opinion hasn't changed from before. I love some of Didion's other books but these essays are trying too hard to over-intellectualize mundane life events. Didion is way over-analyzing and showcasing her narcissism...she is her own worst enemy 😝
#myownworstenemy
#90sinjuly
An addiction has begun...
#reading #author #joandidion #whitealbum #books #bibliophile #bookworm #booknerd
#TBRtemptation post! First published in '79, this is Didion's reportage of American life in the '60s and '70s with California as her spiritual center. She wittily and fluidly writes about bizarre artifacts, the impulses of the Manson family, a Black Panther Party press conference, John Paul Getty's museum, Georgia O' Keeffe, Hollywood, the women's movement, the Hoover Dam, etc. Calling all Didion fans 😁! #blameLitsy #blameMrBook 😎
so-soThe usual lucid Didion prose and slightly hallucinatory and remote ultra-privileged perspective. The Lowell poem about Caracas in the middle of the essay on Colombia pissed me off. Scenario: essay about San Francisco and L.A. with random poem about Vancouver in the middle of it. Wut?
We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
I spent this month reading for the 2016 #readharder. This was my favorite by far! Day 1 of the #septphotochallenge complete.
