Customer Comments

Annie Dillard is not a writer to be read lightly; her prose is dense, meaningful, and rewarding to read. The Writing Life shares her writing process, the difficult, sometimes convoluted undertaking that demands all of its creator. She shares quotes from other authors, as well as experiences that have shaped her techniques. The Writing Life is a book I have returned to and found more valuable every time I have read it.

The author of A Man Called Ove has hit one out of the park again, or should I say, since Beartown is about a hockey team, that he "had a hat trick?" "Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else's forehead, and pulled the trigger." The many-layered themes of this book: team, family, class, sport, achievement weave in and out of the slogan on the wall of the team president's office:"Culture, Values, Community" How these ideas lead to the climax above make for a compelling story that I will not soon forget.

"Hyacinths are blooming beneath the bench, a million tiny purple arms reaching up from the stalks to embrace the rays of sunlight. The boy recognized the flowers, they're Grandma's, they smell like Christmas." And so are memories; hyacinths, coriander, learning to ride a bike, love, fear, and saying farewell. Every word in this precious book contributes to the picture of a man and his son, his wife, his grandson and a life fully lived. Frederik Backman's best use of language to express the inexpressible...