Items18The creator’s order
  1. 1slouching towards bethlehem (1967)slouching towards bethlehem (1967) 8.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1967Didion’s piece on Haight-Ashbury sits in the same book as essays about self-respect and Joan Baez’s school. What links them is the alertness to things people say without quite hearing themselves. Start here if you want to see how much an observer can let slip into a sentence without telling you…0
  2. 2The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays (2019)The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays (2019) 8.7/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2019Wang opens by asking what a diagnosis can explain and writes about her own experience of schizoaffective disorder. Her attention to the distance between a term and a life makes this a good choice if you want an essayist who can question a category while showing exactly what it has meant to her.0
  3. 3The Book of Delights (2019)The Book of Delights (2019) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2019Ross Gay set out to write short essays daily over a year. The form gives him room to take a small pleasure seriously without claiming that it cancels anything else. Read a few in succession and notice how much of the delight comes from the way he changes his mind inside a sentence.0
  4. 4Notes from No Man's Land (2009)Notes from No Man's Land (2009) 6.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2009An essay that begins with the arrival of the telephone ends up asking what else telephone poles have been used for. Biss keeps her tone measured as the history gets harder to face. That patience is what makes the collection worth reading slowly, especially when a detail you thought was incidental…0
  5. 5Notes of a Native Son (1955)Notes of a Native Son (1955) 8.7/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1955Baldwin writes about protest novels, life in Harlem and Black expatriates, then makes the title essay answer to the memory of his father’s funeral. The shifts are part of the pleasure. A writer who can be devastating about a movie is just as demanding of his own motives.0
  6. 6Trick Mirror (2019)Trick Mirror (2019) 8.9/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2019Tolentino writes about internet life, reality television and the pressure to keep improving yourself. She has a good ear for the moment when a joke about a shared bad habit turns into a question about why she does it too. Try it when you want cultural criticism willing to put its writer in the…0
  7. 7Bad Feminist (2014)Bad Feminist (2014) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2014There’s competitive Scrabble in here alongside pop culture and arguments about feminism. The pleasure is hearing Gay be funny and exact about a thing she enjoys even when it gives her reasons to argue with herself. It’s a good place to start if you like an essayist who makes room for embarrassment…0
  8. 8The Empathy Exams Essays (2014)The Empathy Exams Essays (2014) 6.6/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2014Jamison starts from her job playing patients so medical students can practice diagnosis. The role gives her an unusually concrete way to ask what it means to perform care or to have someone recognize your pain. The question follows her into essays about very different kinds of suffering, which is…0
  9. 9Minor Feelings (2020)Minor Feelings (2020) 9.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2020Hong writes about the English language, shame, poetry and friendship. Her collection asks what happens when the hopeful story a country tells about itself sounds nothing like your own experience. The wit makes the book easy to enter. The way she goes back over a feeling she can’t quite explain…0
  10. 10The boys of my youth (1998)The boys of my youth (1998)Published Jan 1, 1998Beard keeps returning to sisters, friends, cousins and dogs in her autobiographical essays. She gives small loyalties enough time to acquire a history of their own. Pick this if you like writing about family and friendship where a remembered gesture can tell you more than a long explanation of how…0