false 12528 10 Annie Dillard remembers. She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which "didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge." She remembers the compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a target. In this intoxicating account of her childhood, Dillard climbs back inside her 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old selves with apparent effortlessness. The voracious young Dillard embraces headlong one fascination after another--from drawing to rocks and bugs to the French symbolists. "Everywhere, things snagged me," she writes. "The visible world turned me curious to books; the books propelled me reeling back to the world." From her parents she inherited a love of language--her mother's speech was "an endlessly interesting, swerving path"--and the understanding that "you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself," not for anyone else's approval or desire. And one would be mistaken to call the energy Dillard exhibits in <i>An American Childhood</i> merely youthful; "still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day," she writes, "as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive." 1136708 book 1987 An American Childhood total:1398|5:496|4:514|3:281|2:79|1:28| 1398 5565 1976 180 5 2 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jan 19 08:38:58 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 08:50:47 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1988 Mon Jan 05 20:44:27 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 05 20:57:27 -0800 2009
Annie remembers, and helps you remember, too. Some of her memories ...more...]]> 3 2 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 06 20:51:16 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 04 13:38:54 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Feb 23 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 10 14:28:15 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 23 07:02:34 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Oct 06 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 16 15:49:25 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 06 17:17:57 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Aug 21 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 17:26:07 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 21 21:21:26 -0700 2008 The Writing Life and adored her suggestions and advice. I picked this one up because she was born and raised in Pittsburgh. Her memories, the poignancy and specificity of her ob...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 10:54:49 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 13:02:04 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 true false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 01 22:00:17 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 01 22:01:59 -0700 2007 ]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Wed Mar 25 15:30:42 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 15:30:42 -0700 2009
The way she took an image and strung it through the book. We'd read about something in one section and then later it would pop back up and remind us of the whole image that...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Mar 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 07 07:03:14 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 16 17:52:42 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 1997 Tue Oct 06 12:06:48 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 12:08:24 -0700 2009 2
I first read this as a requirement for Mrs. Nacca's "20 minute speech" about a particular author. ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Aug 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 09:06:24 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 26 15:48:49 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Aug 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 19 06:36:56 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 19:32:08 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jul 06 08:37:44 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 06 08:41:26 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Jun 28 08:37:12 -0700 2008 Sat Jun 28 08:39:39 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Feb 28 13:32:44 -0800 2008 Mon Apr 13 13:54:43 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Feb 20 13:21:40 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 21 09:52:28 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 22 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 09:19:32 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 09:27:14 -0800 2009
I can't remember what e...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 11:56:10 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 08:07:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Mar 28 20:06:58 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 28 20:34:24 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1463379