Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhle read
Review: A babbling stream of zen consciousness nonsense. This book may be interesting to those who like new age poetry but if you're primarily looking to improve your writing craft - seek elsewhere. There are a few nuggets of helpful wisdom here, but they are buried by reams of meandering memoir.
Rating: 
Summary: Bleh.
Review: A babbling stream of zen consciousness nonsense. This book may be interesting to those who like new age poetry but if you're primarily looking to improve your writing craft - seek elsewhere. There are a few nuggets of helpful wisdom here, but they are buried by reams of meandering memoir.
Rating: 
Summary: Older & Wiser...And Very Honest!
Review: After reading some of the reviews here at Amazon, I was a bit hesitant to try this one. But as with movie reviews, I've learned that the opinions of others can often be misleading. And I'm glad I went with my instincts! I LOVED this book! Written with Natalie's trademark simple, straightforward honesty, it confronts life "after" _Writing Down the Bones_ & _Wild Mind_. Where does all the free writing & mind exploration lead? What's the point of it all? She takes us there in this book. Natalie & I are at opposite ends of the spectrum on God, philosophy, and morality, but I've never found a writer who can motivate me to write quite like she does. Her willingness to "tell it like it is" is refreshing and inspiring. Buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: Great Experience
Review: An avid fan of Natalie and her books, I was excited to hear about this one and bought it the day it came out. Like all her books, this one encompasses a certain time in her life and her feelings about writing. I just like the way she writes. So much of it is personal and I enjoyed reading about how certain books have affected her. Every chapter is a novel in itself. She really gets to the root of who we are as writers and why we write. I especially liked the part where she described her need to know the author and the story behind him or her. I thought I was the only one who checked out a book before I read it and felt that nervousness at the first chapter. This is a great book and I am recommending it to all my fellow writing friends.
Rating:
Summary: This is Natalie's Journey
Review: Books like this one help me. They don't help me learn how to write; that's the job of style manuals and writing classes. This book tells me that it's okay to want to write. That it's okay to be frightened. And no I'm not abnormal. I'm not a circus freak because I spend my free time scribbling my thoughts in a notebook. This book encourages me to see the beauty in the often perilous activity of writing. A person should read this if he or she needs the comfort of commiseration. Many aspiring writers struggle with feelings of lonliness, desperation, and confusion, needing urgently to connect with people of like minds who also know how it feels to sit at a desk for a week and produce nothing. If this book is meant to teach you anything, it's that although a writer's life is often difficult, the rewards are many and deep. It's ironic, but reading about the way other people struggle and agonize over their work makes me feel stronger when I go to tackle my own. Read this book if you love writing passionately and need a little something to remind you that you're not the only one.
Rating:
Summary: This is Natalie's Journey
Review: Books like this one help me. They don't help me learn how to write; that's the job of style manuals and writing classes. This book tells me that it's okay to want to write. That it's okay to be frightened. And no I'm not abnormal. I'm not a circus freak because I spend my free time scribbling my thoughts in a notebook. This book encourages me to see the beauty in the often perilous activity of writing. A person should read this if he or she needs the comfort of commiseration. Many aspiring writers struggle with feelings of lonliness, desperation, and confusion, needing urgently to connect with people of like minds who also know how it feels to sit at a desk for a week and produce nothing. If this book is meant to teach you anything, it's that although a writer's life is often difficult, the rewards are many and deep. It's ironic, but reading about the way other people struggle and agonize over their work makes me feel stronger when I go to tackle my own. Read this book if you love writing passionately and need a little something to remind you that you're not the only one.
Rating:
Summary: CLARITY-AFTER THE STORM!
Review: Collecting experiences from the turbulent storms of life and intuitive flashes of inspiration is one thing. Refining them creatively into a brilliant piece of work is another. Bringing clarity to that transformation process is what Ms. Goldberg offers in "Thunder and Lightening". She covers fear of criticism and rejection, the value of writing workshops and the benefits of an editor. She shares her own mistakes and her vulnerability. She says, "writing opens us wide so that our own individual suffering becomes universal suffering". This personal window into the author's life says much about the expressive depth of her writing. You may want to add this "thunderbolt" to your writing kit. It is a an excellent follow-up to Ms. Goldbergs, "Writing Down The Bones" and "Wild Mind".
Rating: 
Summary: Thunder and Lightning???
Review: I am a great Natalie Goldberg fan and expected a lot from her book titled "Thunder and Lightning" I was excited to find this book and expected a "powerful read! I was a bit disappointed. I love when Natalie (in previous books) talks about her family and life and being Jewish. Her lonliness as a young child made her an excellent writer. Her writing style makes you feel like you are in the same room with her and speaking with her. Like having a conversation with her. I loved Mr.Clemente and the rain (Long Quiet Highway.) I love how she loved her Grandmother. In Thunder and Lightning there is some of this but it is fragmented and hard to follow. I didn't enjoy it as much as "Long Quiet Highway," but I did like the story about "Linda" and ice skating.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhle read
Review: I have read one other of Natalie's books and at one point during that first book, I was a bit put off by the journal-style, flow-of-consciousness writing. At the time, I was searching for a quick fix or perhaps I just wanted nuts-and-bolts direction. And sometimes, encountering a lot of chatter over a writer's psyche, I do want to say, "Oh what's with all the melodrama? Just tell the wanna-be that they need to be damned good story-tellers and be done with it!"
But then, Natalie Goldberg practices Zen meditation. She grew up in the 60s, too, a time when inner musings were given their due in the public forum of Hippie-dom. And if you know anything about Eastern philosophies, you should at least garner that patience is a virtue and that you are not reading Strunk and White.
Anyway, after a chapter or two, Natalie began to discuss exactly the problem I was having with my novel, a problem I'd just begun to point out to myself but still wasn't quite sure what it entailed. And then Natalie described herself in the same place at one time. Problem: stalling in one's story because the writer is trying too damned hard to control the characters, who they are, etc. It helped, exceedingly, to learn her explanation for it.
The same thing occurred in the next chapter, and the next.
I've read many how-to writing books over the years ( you can put off writing indefinitely so long as you got something to read) and that I came across this book at this time could be deemed one of those little coincidences. These may have been some obscure how-to questions; not every writer may ask and another author might have brushed past them.
So don't knock the Zen. When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Rating:
Summary: worth a second reading
Review: I hear a lot of negative things about this book; mostly that it's not as good as her first two on writing. But I think it's just as strong--it just needs to be read from a certain perspective. Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind are wonderful books, especially for the beginning writer, who needs lots of exercises to get started. But I think it's equally wonderful to read Thunder & Lightning and see how Natalie Goldberg's thoughts on writing are changing as she grows as a writer. I read this book when it first came out, and I didn't really understand what she was trying to say. Recently I read it again and I understood perfectly her thoughts on writing within a structure and persevering despite the fears that writers come up against over and over, even after years of good writing. Don't be too quick to dismiss this book.
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