this copy of these fabulous essay has a different cover from that pictured.

Have had the book on Mt TBR for some time; now I wonder why on earth I kept picking up other books ahead of it--I loved it! Kingsolver had me hooked from the very first (title) essay, about living with a hermit crab in Tucson. It doesn't hurt either, that I consider the Sonoran Desert home, and have enjoyed the musky scent of a havelina tribe on whose route I lived :)

some books are just to hard to leave in the wild, where chances are I'll never know what happened to them. this is one of those. so I looked on Cliff's to see who has had this one their wishlist the longest, and am sending it off to Wilmar.

Once received, Wilmar, this book is yours to love, to hate, to wild-release, to mark PC, to pass on to pass around, whatever. tis yours....I hope you'll find your wait well-worthwhile!

Caught! (It arrived yesterday already)

Thanks so much Erishkigal!

I love the way Barbara Kingsolver writes. Until now I mainly read her fiction, and I'm very curious what I will think of her essays.

I hope it will not take me too long to start - and finish ;-) - this book.

I started 'High tide' last year immediately after I got it, but skipped some essays underway. So I reread the book from back to back end of 2007 - beginning of 2008. I loved it! Many of Barbara Kingsolvers opinions are my own opinions (on violence in books and movies, on nature etc.). I loved the pieces of information about her life, her ideas about writing, the fanmail, hilarious; I laughed out loud at times.

One of the few pieces of advice I ever give other writers, if they ask for it, is to try to write with no one looking over your shoulder. - p. 248
***
[...] It's emotion, not event, that creates a dynamic response in the mind of a reader. The artist's job is to sink a taproot in the reader's brain that will grow downward and find path into the reader's soul and experience, so that some new emotional inflorescence will grow out of it. - p. 250
***
I never use my own family and friends as the basis to fictional characters, mainly because I would like them to remain my family and freinds. And secondarily, because I believe the purpose of art is not to photocopy life but distill it, learn from it, improve on it, embroider tiny disjunct pieces of it into something insightful and entirely new. As Marc Chagall said, "Great art picks up where nature ends." [Piet Mondriaan, famous 20th century Dutch painter, shared this opnion. This caused his art to become so abstract that critics could hardly handle it] - p. 258

Today, 29-01-2008, the book continues its travels to hetku77 in Finland, who had it on her wishlist.

18.2. The book had arrived by mail last week. Thank you for fulfilling my wish, Wilmar!

The book has arrived and has joined my to read pile!

Thanks hetku!