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Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings.

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Teaching a reader to write

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Essays to tease the depths, this collection comprises some pf the best of Dillard's work. Clear insight and brilliant analogy move from the natural world to the soul. My recent re-read renewed my respect for Dillard's intellect and heart. How is the quest for the spiritual Absolute related to a voyage to a planetary pole? What equipment will you take? Do you believe you will return? Can one teach a stone to talk in this profane age when bushes no longer burn and mountains are silent? This is a book I am willing to loan, but my name and address are inside the cover. This is one comet I intend to witness again.

Immerse yourself in Annie Dillard's thoughts and unique use of language

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This is a book of timeless essays regarding our journey through life. Enjoy. From the essay - Sojourners. "We are down here in time, where beauty grows. Even if things are as bad as they could possible be, and as meaningless, then matters of truth are themselves indifferent; we may as well please our sensibilities and, with as much spirit as we can muster, go out with a buck and wing. The planet is less like an enclosed spaceship-spaceship earth-than it is like an exposed mangrove island beautiful and loose. We the people started small and have since accumulated a great and solacing muck of soil, of human culture. We are rooted in it; we are bearing it with us across nowhere. The word 'nowhere' is our cue: the consort of musicians strikes up, and we in the chorus stir and move and start twirling our hats. A mangrove island turns drift to dance. It creates its own soil as it goes, rocking over the salt sea at random, rocking day and night and round the sun, rocking round the sun and out toward east of Hercules."

teaching a stone to talk	Customer Rating:
Tis is some of the worst prose i've ever tried to read. It reminds me of those old Dick and Jane primers in which everything is repeated. Every paragraph could have been condensed effectively into a single sentence. I struggled to finish the first essay but then gave up. It didn't seem to be going anywhere. Sorry I wasted my penny on it.

Teaching a Stone to Talk - Good Read

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Annie Dillard's work is most certainly her best with the exception of her Thoreau-esque first work. Her writing style and personality are captivating as she engages with a myriad of environments, from local lakes to the Galopagos Islands. As a naturalist writer, she explores the interaction between environments and individuals--the ways in which humanity and ecology play off one another. Fans of Joan Didion will also enjoy the personal feel of Dillard's work as well as the playful use of time and metaphor to capture the dynamism and eccentricity of everyday life. This work is a must-have for any lover/enthusiast of nature and everyone who appreciates flowing prose and lyrical description.

Everyone knows that stones can't talk...

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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.