Welcome to Litsy!

Your reading habits are a form of self-care - a vehicle for unwinding and taking time for you. You tend to gravitate towards books that make you feel optimistic and relaxed, and you are energized knowing you can escape from reality to visit worlds and characters you love by simply settling in with a good book. Thrillers, mysteries, fiction or romance… if it lets you switch off the world, you‘ll read them as fast as you can get them...

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Leggo in contemporanea anche questo. Molto acuto

Up North moments brought to you from a log cabin in Amberg, WI...

Oh mannnn... I am curious as to what her boss did to inspire her to want a voodoo doll of him...

So that says it all, doesn't it

Took myself out for a treat on a cold and rainy day

Receiving your father's brain autopsy in your Valentines package from your mom... that's not weird

This book was not entirely without merit. There were quite a few pieces of essays that left me feeling thoughtful and pierced. But for the most part, it was just that: pieces. On the whole, the impression I walk away with of Franzen, whose fictional work I have loved, is of a somewhat pretentious man who wrongly thinks he is self-aware.

I don't regret reading this book. It had its redeeming moments. But I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

“How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.”

Although Franzen‘s flowery/pretentious writing style was a bit much, and the topics of a few of the essays seemed a bit strange, ultimately this is a competent collection. I do wish he'd pulled back in a few instances so the essays felt more human & less Literary, and I absolutely detested that Harper's essay & his attitude towards the "social novel" which seemed more like a pity fest than an intellectual stance on the country's reading habits.

When a smoker says he wants to quit but can‘t, what he‘s really saying is, “I want to quit but I want even more not to suffer the agony of withdrawal.” To argue otherwise is to jettison any lingering notion of personal responsibility.

Time magazine, for my father, was the ultimate cultural authority. In the last decade, the magazine whose red border twice enclosed the face of James Joyce has devoted covers to Scott Turow and Stephen King. These are honorable writers; but it was the size of their contracts that won them covers. The dollar is now the yardstick of cultural authority, and Time, which not long ago aspired to shape the national taste, now serves mainly to reflect it.

How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.

But the first lesson reading teaches us is how to be alone.

Finally finished this one and did not particularly like it. Franzen comes off pretentious and arrogant. There were few passages I liked, mostly when he was just describing something that happened to him minus all the big words and extra philosophical rambling. Disappointed in this one and would not recommend it. Especially disagreed with this statement, "...writers and other artists have assumed extra pain to ease the burden for the rest of us..."

Still working on this one...some essays are better than others. #nonfiction #essays #librarybook

Spotted this one at the library and had to check it out when I read part of the description inside: "...how to be alone in a noisy and distracting mass culture.". I've seen some mixed reviews, but I'm excited to start this one tonight! #librarybook #essays #nonfiction

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression's actual essence, which is an estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage..., the more happy-faced the rest of humanity seems...

This comes out as an overall pick and there are some fantastic essays but I still hit on a few that really didn't do much for me. By the end I felt I'd warmed more to Franzen's style and I still one more of his essay collections kicking about somewhere so time will tell. I'd say there's definitely stuff worth reading in here but I still think he's a much better novelist than essayist

Halfway through this. Mixed feelings; I like this a lot more than Farther Away but it feels a little unbalanced still.

I read someone once say something like, "I really get into Franzen. Everything but the birds. I just can't match his interest in them." I concur.

A favorite literary quote--

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It's difficult to review a collection of essays. Some are five-star, others are two-star. So I averaged it out to three stars. "Why Bother?", "Imperial Bedroom", and "The Reader in Exile" are standouts. Agnes believes I need to learn better how to leave her alone....?
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