This is a classic! Annie Dillard's essays on nature from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

I have another copy, so I am planning to release this one.

I am mailing this to Antof9 in Lakewood, CO.

Look what came in yesterday's mail!

Thank you sooooo much, yabookmaven! I really appreciate your generosity in sharing this book with me. My book club has it on the list, and although I don't know if it's next, or Dorian Gray, or what, it will definitely be read soon!

And I didn't forget your interest in The Devil Wears Prada -- in fact, just last night, I got it back from my friend. We're both looking forward to the movie too :)

I'd like to re-read it, and then I'll send it on.

Thanks again for sharing this book with me -- I'm so excited to read it!

After much soul-searching and this blog entry, I have come to the conclusion that even though I'm only 30 pages from the end, I do not have to finish this book! My book club finished it about 60 months ago, and I didn't keep up. Big mistake when it's not a book you find compelling, let me tell you!

I should aso mention here that we read a couple of Annie Dillard's essays in a creative nonfiction class I took last spring. I thought the eclipse one rather interesting, and was definitely looking forward to reading this.

So here's the hard part: We discussed this ad nauseum at book club (BBC), and I have a bazillion pages marked for either BBC discussion and/or my journal entry. But I don't want to spend the next 7 hours writing it!

Let's see what I have marked ...

oh! This part about rushing the steers totally cracked me up: ... some steers are bunched in a knot between me and the barbed-wire fence I want to cross. So I suddently rush at them in an enthusiastic sprint, flailing my arms and hollering, "Lightning! Copperhead! Swedish meatballs!" LOL! Of course I thought I'd love this book :)

The frog getting sucked into juice by the "Giant water bug" was actually disturbing. And I don't even like frogs! Fascinating, but disturbing.

Another spot where I thought "I like this author. She's a real person" was her description of a cold day collecting cynthia moth cocoons. My fingers were stiff and red with cold, and my nose ran. I had forgotten the Law of the Wild, which is, "Carry Kleenex."

I liked what she wrote about the Starlings in America, and I really enjoyed her description of foreign languages as codes for English (an assumption she, and I made as children).

More later. I just looked at the clock and realized it's a quarter to midnight. For a book I'm not finishing, I sure have a lot to say about it!

the next day: I don't understand this sentence: "It shows that the pressures of growth gang aft a-gley."

Last, I just like beautiful writing. This part is moving to me:

It is like the surfacing of an impulse, like the materialization of fish, this rising, this coming to a head, like the ripening of nutmeats still in their husks, ready to split open like buckeyes in a field, shining with newness. "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not." The fleeing shreds I see, the back parts, are a gift, an abundance. When Moses came down from the cliff in Mount Sinai, the people were afraid of him: the very skin on his face shone.

Do the Eskimos' faces shine, too?

I'm checking the wish list site to see if anyone is interested in this. I'd rather keep it travelling, I think, than release it. Although it's such a nature book, it might be very appropriate for wild releasing!

Thanks again for sharing this one with me! I hope my "I don't really like it" review doesn't sound ungrateful for you sending it!

Pictured: a favorite nature picture of mine, taken in Zürich, Switzerland from Uetliberg.

I'm giving this book to one of the BBC guys. He was out of town when we read this, so he never got around to it. But since he likes nonfic more than fiction, he'll probably like it :)