So, I've been off BL for a long, long time. A lot has happened, I got pregnant and had a daughter. My mom got sick and passed away. I had to clear out and sell my childhood home and all the contents while trying to balance all of that and my full time job. It's been...something. For a while, not l...
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Du...
My first Didion, which I gave a four-star rating - partly out of fear (and I've read it trying to deal with fear, hopefully irrational), partly because of Didion's intellectual jet-setter attitude (but this book is, among others, a parting letter to the life she led with her late husband, and it cou...
[Non-fiction] This book was mentioned in Will Schwalbe's 'The End of Your Life Book Club' and it is also about loss -- about life in the face of the loss of a significant other. A poignantly honest and raw account of a hurting heart laid bare. The author's husband collapses suddenly and dies from he...
This month I lost of very close friend of mine, one who was taken from this world way before his time. I've been struggling to find a way to come to terms with this loss, to accept it, to understand it… if any of that is even possible. So, a friend recommended The Year of Magical Thinking to me, thi...
Sometimes I'm very bad at choosing books. I read this one, for instance, because I saw a nice photo of someone reading it and the title sounded promising. I had not read anything by Didion before, except an article on her, I knew nothing about the book, I jumped right in. And then it struck me. Why ...
To call Joan Didion cold or even heartless - true as it may be in the light of The Year of Magical Thinking, this monument to the analytical dissection of grief - is itself a cold and heartless condemnation. We all grieve in our own way. This is hers. After losing numerous family members suddenly an...
This is the second book my girlfriend has recommended to me about people whose spouses die. So...There's a clinical feel about this book. Not accidentally: Didion goes out of her way to cite research on the effects of grief. She analyzes it. You can feel her standing back from it, trying desperately...
Just three stars 'I liked it' It is hard to grade though. This is my first book by Didion and you can almost tell that she didn't edit much in these notes, it reads as a journal - but a censored one. I loved her snap-shot memories the most. I did lack the passion though, the red hot feelings, Didion...
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