Let Me Tell You What I Mean
Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion, 2021
Final verdict: ★★★
Hills Like White Elephants …
Out of all the short stories in this collection:
True standout star stories that I would have rated 5 stars separately:
"Why I Write"
"A Trip to Xanadu"
4 stars:
"Telling Stories"
"Pretty Nancy"
Honestly all the others were just pretty good, though Joan Didion writes with such a natural and arresting voice that feels so real. The only story I did not enjoy was “Everywoman.com.”
"Why I Write" especially changed the way I approach my own writing now. It's such a beautiful, naturally flowing story that tugs on emotions and experiences that I know from my own past - seeing myself in Didion's words was wonderful. (& maybe altered the course of my writing trajectory forever, delivering a much-needed slight shift?) It’s so chock-filled with pinnacle-of-truth advice that I wanted to highlight whole entire pages.
I’d rate Joan Didion's masterful writing 5 stars, but unfortunately I have to rate the book overall only 3 stars because it feels like a pretty miserly grab for profit. The type spacing/margins felt quite weird - much too large, probably just trying to stretch out the short text into a sellable "book-length" thing. So future buyers beware, I guess.
Overall though, I'm glad I found this little book squished on a shelf at a local bookstore and took it home with me. That one story "Why I Write" was, at the moment in my life when I read it, exactly what I needed to prepare myself for the mountain of essay-writing that awaits me in these next few weeks. So honestly, those 12 thin book pages from that story have redeemed the $24.99 I paid for this tiny little book.
(There’s another pro to this book though: I learned 17 new words while reading this because Joan Didion has the most awesome vocabulary!)
"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.
What I want and what I fear."
-from “Why I Write,” Joan Didion.
More mediocre book reviews can be found on my Goodreads! Thanks for reading ☺︎