Rating: 
Summary: Confusing at times, but always profound.
Review: I thought this was a great book for anyone thinking about some of life's most difficult questions. Dillard captures the vastness of nature within these few pages.
Rating: 
Summary: She Ecslipses All
Review: If you know Annie Dillard then you know her stunning essay "Total Eclipse." This is the book that contains that breathtaking work of art. Read this as your introduction to Dillard. And by all means, if you do know Dillard's stuff already but haven't read this book...well, what's the problem?!
Rating:
Summary: She Ecslipses All
Review: If you know Annie Dillard then you know her stunning essay "Total Eclipse." This is the book that contains that breathtaking work of art. Read this as your introduction to Dillard. And by all means, if you do know Dillard's stuff already but haven't read this book...well, what's the problem?!
Rating: 
Summary: Everyone knows that stones can't talk...
Review: Poetry is poetry and prose is prose. In my opinion, the extent to which they are mixed is the extent to which the quality of each, with some exceptions, deteriorates. The problem I have with Dillard's writing is that she so freely mixes the two that one is left with either pretty, but obscure prose or overly structured narrative poetry. The problem isn't that Dillard is a poor writer, its rather that she doesn't have a clear vision of what her artful constructions mean. The book is all wings and no roots. It ends up being an excersise in sophistry that, one feels, sweeps the author along in its grand illusions as readily as it does the sensitive reader. I almost feel guilty pointing out the emptiness of it all.
Rating: 
Summary: Did the bear (who went over the mountain) get burned?
Review: The first thing I think I should say is that I don't think I fully understand this book.The second thing I think I should say is that I like it anyway. Way back at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard decided to open her eyes and see what she could see. Pilgrim is a vibrant and enthusiastic book, Annie reacting exuberantly to the things she sees, even the puzzling and disturbing ones. Nowadays, she's been "seeing" awhile, and I don't think she really likes what she sees. In Teaching a Stone to Talk, there's a deep feeling of unsettledness, of discomfort. Annie sees a world that is silent, beautiful and ugly at the same time, a world that is complex and unyielding to any attempts to make it make sense without closing your eyes. There's brilliance here I think...of an unsettling sort. Some of her revelations float right over my head. But often she connects, and beautifully. "An Expedition to the Pole" brilliantly and powerfully compares the titled subject to religion and the search for God. "Total Eclipse" and "God in the Doorway" are other favorites, along with "Living Like Weasels" - probably one of her best essays ever, and the only one in this book that actually feels like Pilgrim. Read an excerpt. there's a link under "book info." See if you like it. I do. If you'd like to discuss this book with me, or other books, or recommend something you think I'd like, or just chat, e-mail me at williekrischke@hotmail.com. but be nice.
Rating:
Summary: Living Like Weasels-A Way to Live
Review: The story, Living Like Weasels, is such powerful encouragement to live fully in the moment with all of one's heart and soul, with no regard for the consequences.The imagery is stunning in its simplicity and strength, using nature as a metaphor for how to be. Thank you Annie Dillard for a wonderful story.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely incredible!
Review: These essays are Annie at her best. Who else could compare and contrast going to church with going to the North Pole, and pull it off with profound thoughts, clever humor, and attention to historical and natural detail. Annie Dillard continues to be one of the world's deepest thinkers. You will enjoy this book on so many levels that it will easily become a book to read for the rest of your life.
Rating:
Summary: From The Mundane To The Infinite ... And Back Again
Review: This book truly is a well crafted and literary set of short stories; all or most of them being autobiographical. But the author does something special in this book. Her stories all center around the physical, mixed with the spiritual, mixed with the metaphysical, both alone and in concert, and finally, in the way they seem to co-exist, at least to her perception and observation.
The substance of her plot is more a substance of a progression of human feelings, than events. The events just happen, the reasons, she tells us, are personal, and mostly uncontrollable. But they ARE. They exist temporally, spiritually, physically, and metaphysically all at the same time. How each of us sees these things is a bit like Albert Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity. It all depends on how you come to the words of Annie Dillard, and how we interpret what she is saying. Whether you can relate to it out of your own experience, or whether you can live it vicariously through Dillard's writing matters not, what matters is the attitude and state of mind that one brings to the stories.
For readers interested in a mind expanding vision of reality, and non-reality, this book is beautifully written to take you to all these places. And it takes you through feelings, that almost every reader can relate to. It is worth every minute spent on it.
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