I love reading essays--they are compact, intimate, informative and thought-provoking. I read everything by John McPhee, Joan Didion, Anne Lamott, Susan Orlean and Diane Ackerman. For food writing I love M.F.K. Fisher, Elizabeth David, Laurie Colwin, and Calvin Trillin. Trillin is humor too, as is David Sedaris. Thoreau and Emerson, of course. Virginia Woolf. E.B. White. Peter Hessler's collections on China. Anne Fadiman, Gretel Ehrlich, Annie Dillard. And so many more...
Styles vary--some, such as McPhee, put a little distance between writer and reader. Others are conversational--I think of them as friends in a book. Anne Lamott is like that. The late, great Laurie Colwin. Here is the opening paragraph from one of her essays in Home Cooking:
"How depressing it is to open a cookbook whose first chapter is devoted to equipment. You look around your kitchen. No chinoise! No flan ring! No salamander! How are you ever going to get anything cooked? What sort of person is it who doesn't own a food mill?" (Laurie Colwin, The Low-Tech Person's Batterie de Cuisine)
Opening sentences from a few writers, to show you how tone can vary:
"In January of the current year (1870) while dining in Paris at the house of an old friend of mine, I received from M. Du Camp, the well-known writer and expert on the statistics of Paris, quite an unexpected invitation to be present at the execution of Tropmann..." (Ivan Tugenev, The Execution of Tropmann)
"No one perhaps has ever felt passionately toward a pencil." (Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting)
"The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place." (Rachel Carson, The Marginal World)
"I have been campaigning to have the national Thanksgiving dish changed from turkey to spaghetti carbonara." (Calvin Trillin)
"It's May and I've just awakened from a nap, curled against sagebrush the way my dog taught me to sleep--sheltered from wind." (Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces)
My shelves are filled with essays and narrative non-fiction. Two excellent anthologies are The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate and the Norton Book of Nature Writing. I highly recommend the Best American series that comes out every year. I am stocking up on winter books (as though I will be living in a 19th century wilderness or post-apocalypse bunker) and will treat myself to the 2012 Best American Essays, Science and Nature Writing, Non-Required Reading, Sports Writing and Travel Writing. Do you enjoy essays?
Jen
It's funny but I was just whining to myself about not having anything good to read, and now, here I go. I'm emailing myself your first paragraph.
ReplyDeleteIt is so true that Anne Lamott is like a close friend and I've been wanting to read John McPhee for years but keep forgetting. And away I go...
Thanks Jen!
Please let me know what you read and how you like them!
DeleteHello Jen:
ReplyDeleteHow we have loved this post particularly for the way in which it introduces us to some new writers and reacquaints us with old friends. First lines, of novels, essays or indeed any type of book, are so important for the way in which they must, in a very brief space, secure the reader's attention for all time. You have included some excellent examples here.
Have a very happy weekend.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I had to restrain myself--maybe one day I'll do an entire post of first lines!
DeleteI've read a number of John McPhee's books. When Katrina hit New Orleans, I kept thinking, "Wow! That's what John McPhee predicted in The Control of Nature - that a perfect hurricane would drown New Orleans and it would be the fault of the Army Corps of Engineers." Life passes so quickly - McPhee is already 81.
ReplyDeleteYou are more intellectual than I - I haven't read Didion and some of the others you mention. I would rather listen to David Sidaris than read him. I still find his NPR essay on when he was Santa's elf absolutely hilarious every Christmas season. And he's middle age now, too.
Do you ever listen to The Moth Radio Hour? I think you would love it. True stories narrated by the narrator. I love this one I just heard by Edgar Oliver about Morocco. He has the most amazing voice and it's funny. Here's a link: it's segment 2:
Deletewww.prx.org/pieces/75232-moth-radio-hour-604
There's really nothing intellectual about any of the writers I listed. I think it's my genre--the what I would take to a desert island books. I have a hard time with most traditional (non-narrative) non-fiction.
I love essays. and I've actually noticed that by now I read as much non-fiction as I read fiction. biographical, historical, but also just very specific stuff on very specific topics.
ReplyDeletehave a great and book-filled weekend xx
Would love to hear some favorites of yours!
DeleteDear Jen,
ReplyDeletewe are living in eachothers minds! I have been thinking lately about my addiction in collecting quotations... and maybe create a blog post about it!
I love the way you write about books and the paragraphs you've chosen today for us.
I also forgot to tell you the other day that I like your new header : )
Enjoy a good weekend full of book love my friend!
That would make a great post!
DeleteThe begining of books is very important to captivate readers' minds. I enjoyed each of your excerpts from your favourute ones. Thank you very much for this. Non-fiction is sometimes more evocative than fictions.
ReplyDeleteI like your new header, too!
I'm so glad you (and others) like the new header, and that you enjoyed the excerpts.
DeleteWhat a wonderful post! When I read essays and non fiction I'm a much more intelligent reader than when I read a novel. My introduction to nature writing was Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek about 25 years ago. Thank you for all the recommendations. If I read essays before I go to bed, I sleep much better than when I read fiction.
ReplyDeletePilgrim at Tinker Creek was like my bible for a couple years. Just amazing.
Deletegoodness you make me want to read more essays! i so enjoyed the quotes you chose too.
ReplyDeleteessays are one of those almost-gaps in my reading (have read Woolf, Thoreau, few others), where to fit them amongst every other word i wish to devour?
some you have listed are new to me as writers, so will look them up now, you've inspired me (whilst enjoying russian writers, turgenev has never done it for me).
I know--there's so much to read, so little time. I really love those Best of...collections; and you don't even have to read the current years. The travel writing ones may be my favorites.
DeleteFirst, LOVE your new banner! Second, this is such a wonderful post! Can't wait to explore the authors you mention (at least the ones I don't already read.)
ReplyDeleteOh I'm so glad. There are some wonderful garden writers too. I have a feeling there will be a part II to this post.
DeleteEssays are one of my favorite forms of reading, and I am going to mine this post heavily for my next book-buying binge. (Every couple of years I buy 500 or so books at once (lucky me!) and have them all shipped to Taiwan.) Your inclusion of several favorites, plus your blog in general, assures me that I will like most of the ones new to me.
ReplyDelete--Road to Parnassus
The thought of 500 books arriving (I picture them in steamer trunks) makes me giddy. My faith in humanity, which was ebbing, is now restored.
DeleteI love recommending books (and finding out what other people are reading). I will definitely be posting more on this subject.
I like your banner! It's beautiful and unique. And very good variety of books. I learned a lot from your blog. Thanks to you!
ReplyDeleteboat loans
Laurie Colwin would have been my BFF if we had only met and Anne Lamott, well there's still time with her.
ReplyDeleteEllen Gilchrist, "The Writing Life", have you read?
If it has to do with food, gardening, writing or living abroad, I'm reading.
Lovely post.
xo Jane
"Alone In a Room With an Eggplant" ...I must have read it 20 times. Loved her so much I went to her memorial service.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read the Gilchrist book--thank you!
I love reading essays. We just went to Strand last weekend to buy everything from Nora Ephron. We had a few, but wanted to go back and read her old stuff. I love the quotes you've added in your post...makes me want to go to the library today.
ReplyDeleteEssays are such wonderful reads. I think I have every book by M.F.K. Fisher; "The Art of Eating" sits at my bedside table and when I reached the Zs I stopped because once I read that I'm finished. I think that was 4 years ago. Silly. I also love Laurie Colwin and Calvin Trillin. Clearly a pattern here.
ReplyDelete