We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

This book came up while I was buying "Political Fictions" for a friend of mine, and I was worried I'd missed something, but actually it's every nonfiction book she's written up through 2003. I've savored every word of Didion's nonfiction since reading "Goodbye To All That" (the final essay of Slouching Toward Bethlehem) in a nonfiction class in college , and she's never let me down. It's not simply that Didion is one of... Read Full Review

WARNING! This is an extremely biassed review! No one writes like Joan Didion. Every story, almost every sentence is a study of someone who obviously loves the language. Didion hones in on our finest feelings, our fears, our sorrows shot from her literary arrow, with the truest aim. I cannot read Didion without wanting to know more...there is something in her non-fiction pieces which reaches out and grabs you, drawing you... Read Full Review

What I had read from Didion in my college comp. class could not have prepared me for the depth and beauty of her body of work. In retrospect, I cannot believe that my professor only asked us to read ONE essay from this remarkable woman. Her work is amazing! Now I see what thousands of others have always known--that Didion is undoubtedly one of the best essayists and authors alive today. I can't wait to read The Year of... Read Full Review

Joan wrote her best when she wrote about California. She's in a league of her own. She writes about California the way it is,the strangest foriegn country in the nation. She gets at the psychic truth of her subject, which is no small thing. One of the very few true writers,ever.

Joan Didion is the one writer I can return to again and again. I marvel at each paragraph, each sentence. Her voice is unique and though she has many imitators she has no equal. I still regularly reread The White Album which I discovered as a teenager over 20 years ago. This it a beautiful edition and a wonderful collection.