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Title: Thinking Out Loud : On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the Private by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 0-449-90905-0 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 08 March, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Self-Satfisfied Schmata
Comment: Indeed the first reviewer couldn't have said it better. Quindlen suffers from self-involved, self-satisfied writing. She's so taken with her rather mundane reflections, average in their insight, and lackluster "poignent moments" she works so hard to construct, that she cannot see the inviting realm of ideas -- just out there, apparently beyond her reach.
Ho Hum, Anna.
Rating: 1
Summary: Lots about her children
Comment: Like most people who talk incessantly about their children, Anna Quindlen is a terrific bore. Over and over again, we learn that her three children are "the greatest joy" of her life. We're happy for her at first, but in the end we just don't want hear any more.
When she finally forces herself to change the subject (or is forced to by her long-suffering editors), she'll write something like "adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike" or "people are troubled by abortion, even outright opposed" or "they say that traveling broadens the mind and I believe it." Really?
Vladimir Nabokov wrote that it is always the second rate writer who appears to be the old friend, popping up to reassure us with the obvious. And so it is with our friend Anna. In this collection of her New York Times columns from the 1990s, there is never an opinion that surprises or any indication of research done beyond a cursory glance at CNN. When choosing her subject matter, she relentlessly runs with the pack. When all the other columnists are writing about the Gulf War, the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill scandal, and the presidential elections, there she is writing about those events too.
In the introduction, Quindlen tells us that she grew up enamored with the columnist Dorothy Thompson and she seems to have modeled herself after her. In particular, Thompson's supposedly broad range of interests: "what struck me was her willingness to write about the Third Reich one day and nasturtiums the next." However, is Thompson really a good model to follow? If anyone remembers Dorothy Thompson, it is because of "The New Russia," a highly misleading book on Stalin's paradise, based entirely on a canned tour of the country and on press releases that were translated by the Soviets especially for Thompson.
Quindlen does actually stop talking about her children long enough to make pronouncements on foreign affairs. Back in 1992, she calls for the "Eurocentric" United States to do something about the famine in Somalia, even though "there are no easy solutions" to the problem. Luckily, despite the fact that the US has a "peculiar myopic ignorance" and is even a little racist when it comes to Somalia, Anna can sort out the moral issues for us. "We lost sight of the best reason to involve ourselves in foreign affairs-because it is sometimes obviously the moral thing to do, " she writes in the column entitled "Somalia's Plagues." Needless to say, Quindlen has never been to Africa and what she knows about Somalia appears to have come only from the newspapers and from the heads of foreign aid agencies. And it is not too surprising that Quindlen doesn't have anything to say about the subsequent US intervention into Somalia, which was disastrous. But then again, she has a column to write, one about her three children, who are the greatest joy of her life.
Rating: 5
Summary: More political than personal ...
Comment: I am a huge fan of Anna Quindlen so I enjoyed this book. However, readers should be advised that if they are searching for the more "personal" side of Ms. Quindlen, her writings on life, love, parenting, that we know from her "Life in the 30's" columns or "Living out Loud" book, they might be disappointed by the heavily political and social commentary in this collection. This is more "Quindlen on politics and the Supreme Court" than it is about life at large.
There is much discussion of Catholicism, abortion rights, and various "hot button" poli-social issues so I would HIGHLY recommend that anyone perusing this selection as a gift is sure to read it themselves first before sending it of to Aunt Gertrude or Grandma.
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Title: Living Out Loud by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 0804105278 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: 30 September, 1989 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 0345422783 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 25 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 0375504613 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 31 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Object Lessons by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 080410946X Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: 22 March, 1992 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: One True Thing by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 044022103X Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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