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The Best American Essays 2006
"The essays in this volume are powerful, plainspoken meditations on birthing, dying, and all the business in between," writes Lauren Slater in her introduction to the 2006 edition. "They reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness. The essays tell hard-won tales wrestled sometimes from great pain."
The twenty powerful essays in this volume are culled from periodicals ranging from The Sun to The New Yorker, from Crab Orchard Review to Vanity Fair. In "Missing Bellow," Scott Turow reflects on the death of an author he never met, but one who "overpowered me in a way no other writer had." Adam Gopnik confronts a different kind of death, that of his five-year-old daughter's pet fish -- a demise that churns up nothing less than "the problem of consciousness and the plotline of Hitchock's Vertigo."
A pet is center stage as well in Susan Orlean's witty and compassionate saga of a successful hunt for a stolen border collie. Poe Ballantine chronicles a raw-nerved pilgrimage in search of salvation, solace, and a pretty brunette, and Laurie Abraham, in "Kinsey and Me," journeys after the man who dared to plumb the mysteries of human desire. Marjorie Williams gives a harrowing yet luminous account of her life with cancer, and Michele Morano muses on the grammar of the subjunctive mood while proving that "in language, as in life, moods are complicated, but at least in language there are only two."
The twenty powerful essays in this volume are culled from periodicals ranging from The Sun to The New Yorker, from Crab Orchard Review to Vanity Fair. In "Missing Bellow," Scott Turow reflects on the death of an author he never met, but one who "overpowered me in a way no other writer had." Adam Gopnik confronts a different kind of death, that of his five-year-old daughter's pet fish -- a demise that churns up nothing less than "the problem of consciousness and the plotline of Hitchock's Vertigo."
A pet is center stage as well in Susan Orlean's witty and compassionate saga of a successful hunt for a stolen border collie. Poe Ballantine chronicles a raw-nerved pilgrimage in search of salvation, solace, and a pretty brunette, and Laurie Abraham, in "Kinsey and Me," journeys after the man who dared to plumb the mysteries of human desire. Marjorie Williams gives a harrowing yet luminous account of her life with cancer, and Michele Morano muses on the grammar of the subjunctive mood while proving that "in language, as in life, moods are complicated, but at least in language there are only two."
304 pages, Paperback
First published October 11, 2006
12 people are currently reading
296 people want to read
About the author
Lauren Slater
21 books208 followersLauren Slater (born March 21, 1963) is an American psychotherapist and writer.
She is the author of numerous books, including Welcome to My Country, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, Opening Skinner’s Box, and Blue Beyond Blue, a collection of short stories. Slater’s most recent book is The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals.
Slater has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them a 2004 National Endowments for the Arts Award, and multiple inclusions in Best American Volumes, and A Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. Slater is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and Elle, among others. She has been nominated several times for National Magazine Awards in both the Essay and the Profile category.
Slater was a practicing psychotherapist for 11 years before embarking on a full-time writing career. She served as the Clinical and then the Executive Director of AfterCare Services, and under her watch the company grew from a small inner city office to a vibrant outpatient clinic servicing some of Boston’s most socioeconomically stressed population.
After the birth of her daughter, Slater wrote her memoir Love Works Like This to chronicle the agonizing decisions she made relating to her psychiatric illness and her pregnancy. In a 2003 BBC Woman’s Hour radio interview, and a 2005 article in Child Magazine, Slater provides information on depression during pregnancy and the risks to the woman and her baby.
She lives and writes in Harvard, Massachusetts.
She is the author of numerous books, including Welcome to My Country, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, Opening Skinner’s Box, and Blue Beyond Blue, a collection of short stories. Slater’s most recent book is The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals.
Slater has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them a 2004 National Endowments for the Arts Award, and multiple inclusions in Best American Volumes, and A Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. Slater is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and Elle, among others. She has been nominated several times for National Magazine Awards in both the Essay and the Profile category.
Slater was a practicing psychotherapist for 11 years before embarking on a full-time writing career. She served as the Clinical and then the Executive Director of AfterCare Services, and under her watch the company grew from a small inner city office to a vibrant outpatient clinic servicing some of Boston’s most socioeconomically stressed population.
After the birth of her daughter, Slater wrote her memoir Love Works Like This to chronicle the agonizing decisions she made relating to her psychiatric illness and her pregnancy. In a 2003 BBC Woman’s Hour radio interview, and a 2005 article in Child Magazine, Slater provides information on depression during pregnancy and the risks to the woman and her baby.
She lives and writes in Harvard, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
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October 28, 2018Buy it for Poe Ballantine's "501 Minutes to Christ", and Emily Bernard's "Teaching the N-Word," stay for Marjorie Williams's "A Matter of Life and Death." This is a really strong collection. My only complaint is the over-representation of The New Yorker pieces, especially since these pieces stood out as the weakest in the anthology. Most innovative essay award goes to Michelle Morano's "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood." When I read an essay like that, I realize what people are missing when they stick to The New Yorker for all their essay reading needs. Lauren Slater also has a really interesting intro.
September 30, 2015
This BAE is solid. According to my check mark system, five essays received single check marks (they were good):
- Emily Bernard's "Teaching the N-Word"
- Adam Gopnik's "Death of a Fish"
- Kim Dana Kupperman's "Relief"
- Alan Shapiro's "Why Write?"
- Lily Tuck's "Group Grief"
And two essays received two check marks (they were great):
- Michele Morano's "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood"
- David Rieff's "Illness as More Than Metaphor"
I have mixed feelings about Lauren Slater's writing, but as BAE editor, she wrote a marvelous introduction that rolled around in my brain for days. Her intro contains many quotable gems, and here are two:
- "The essayist often brings to the writing table an odd mix of shame and showmanship, and it may well be that the tension therein is what compels the work" (xx).
- "[These essays] reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness" (xxii).
"Reflection in a context of kindness"--there's one of the best descriptors of essay writing I've read. There's something to aim for.
- Emily Bernard's "Teaching the N-Word"
- Adam Gopnik's "Death of a Fish"
- Kim Dana Kupperman's "Relief"
- Alan Shapiro's "Why Write?"
- Lily Tuck's "Group Grief"
And two essays received two check marks (they were great):
- Michele Morano's "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood"
- David Rieff's "Illness as More Than Metaphor"
I have mixed feelings about Lauren Slater's writing, but as BAE editor, she wrote a marvelous introduction that rolled around in my brain for days. Her intro contains many quotable gems, and here are two:
- "The essayist often brings to the writing table an odd mix of shame and showmanship, and it may well be that the tension therein is what compels the work" (xx).
- "[These essays] reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness" (xxii).
"Reflection in a context of kindness"--there's one of the best descriptors of essay writing I've read. There's something to aim for.
October 2, 2013
Notes:
"We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future." -- Lauren Slater, 2006 Editor, in her Introduction
"Acclaim of any kind is wonderful, except when it goes to someone else." -- Alan Shapiro, in Why Write?
"You need to be cynical about publishing in order to not be cynical about writing, in order to protect and preserve the deeply private joy of doing the work itself." -- Shapiro
"To flourish as an artist requires a tolerance for frustration, inadequacy, and a deepening sense of failure." -- Shapiro
"All one has to do to be a writer is to write." -- Shapiro
"... the sheer gaiety of projecting our voices out into the ambient air." -- Shapiro
"One of my problems, I realize, is that I tend to feel superior to other people -- smarter and, years ago, probably prettier too -- and that has always been my problem. Why can't I act like everyone else? Why can't I just fit into the group? Why must I be so judgmental?" -- Lily Tuck, in Group Grief
"We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future." -- Lauren Slater, 2006 Editor, in her Introduction
"Acclaim of any kind is wonderful, except when it goes to someone else." -- Alan Shapiro, in Why Write?
"You need to be cynical about publishing in order to not be cynical about writing, in order to protect and preserve the deeply private joy of doing the work itself." -- Shapiro
"To flourish as an artist requires a tolerance for frustration, inadequacy, and a deepening sense of failure." -- Shapiro
"All one has to do to be a writer is to write." -- Shapiro
"... the sheer gaiety of projecting our voices out into the ambient air." -- Shapiro
"One of my problems, I realize, is that I tend to feel superior to other people -- smarter and, years ago, probably prettier too -- and that has always been my problem. Why can't I act like everyone else? Why can't I just fit into the group? Why must I be so judgmental?" -- Lily Tuck, in Group Grief
May 10, 2007
Lauren Slater must have been in a real funk when choosing the cream of this year’s crop of Best American Essays. The collection is a contemplation on mortality, with stories of terminal illness, decline in old age, and facing grief alone and in the company of others. I’m currently reading a great deal about death and dying for a work project, so these personal essays were of professional interest to me; however, I can see how they might be tough to take if reading for pleasure. Sprinkled among the standouts are some newcomers, whose superb writing might have remained hidden in less-well-known publications had Lauren not made a point of avoiding the usual glut of New Yorker and Harper’s pieces. Of the lot, my picks are: Confessions of a Left-Handed Man by Peter Selgin and Laurie Abraham’s Kinsey and Me. Both essays are thoroughly enjoyable and wonderfully crafted templates of the form.
February 3, 2013
I thought these essays really were deserving of the title “Best.” The majority of works in this collection revolved around topics of death and dying. They made me think of my own journey through life and how short life really is. I felt a bit melancholy while reading these, but I was drawn in by the voices of each author's reflections. The humanness examined in these essays, reminds me that the most important things in life aren't things.
May 29, 2011
Essays I found particularly notable: Laurie Abraham - "Kinsey and Me"; Emily Bernard - "Teaching the N-Word"; Ken Chen - "City Out of Breath"; Eugene Goodheart - "Whistling in the Dark"; Kim Dana Kupperman - "Relief"; Michele Morano - "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive"; Sam Pickering - "George"; David Rieff - "Illness as More Than Metaphor"; Oliver Sacks - "Recalled to Life"; Peter Selgin - "Confessions of a Left-Handed Man"; Alan Shapiro - "Why Write?"; Marjorie Williams - "A Matter of Life and Death"
September 6, 2019
As is the case with most anthologies, I loved some, liked others, and strongly disliked a few. There are definitely some common themes running throughout the whole collection, but each piece is definitely unique. I picked this book up on a whim at the library, kind of a strange choice given that it is definitely not 2006 and I (at least in the past) have not been a huge nonfiction reader. But I thoroughly enjoyed this and plan to read some other random years of Best American.
June 1, 2019
Another good entry in this reliably enjoyable series of essays, some standouts here by Marjorie Williams and Susan Orlean.
November 19, 2023
I read these essays one a day.
August 16, 2025
More of a focus on personal essays rather than essays on a topic - really enjoyed this.
July 26, 2019
Liked it, but not in a couldn’t put it down sort of way.
September 18, 2011
I love the essay form ... It's nothing like the horrifying 'essay' that high school students dread being assigned. As Lauren Slater writes in her introduction to this 2006 collection, essays are written in "language rapturous and vivid ... with tentative reflections ... [and] outright contradictions" that capture "the moving, morphing human mind." Essayists mine for meaning through questions, curiosities, character paradoxes, and liminal spaces among what has been, what is, what might be ... All that we can imagine springs to life in a lush compact of words, through the narrow gate of a single thought, moment, memory, quirk that's been "scraped clean of verbal detritus." Macro and micro are one and the same under the essayist's eye; the stories that linger are those that are written "in a context of kindness" -- a quality that Slater came to believe was integral to an essay's reach. With that in mind, here are some gems from the collection:
"To satisfy funders, modern sex research is always framed in terms of disease or dysfunction." (Laurie Abraham, "Kinsey and Me") [Too bad sexual joy is so understudied and underfunded!]
Poe Ballantine, in "501 Minutes to Christ": "Without the distraction of television, that life-support system for people with no lives, I sit for a long while, steeping in the sudden revelation of my own stagnancy." Languishing in a new town after a long bus rude, Ballantine notices that "On the street, as it is in nature, 99 percent of all confrontations are settled or avoided by gesture, expression, and appearance, most of it false bluster." [Whew -- good to know ... and I'd love to learn how he came up with that 99%.] Television to this writer is "like pornography ... the news is a lurid concoction that panders to the basest emotions." Even so, in a cockroach-skittled motel room, he can't resist the lure of the screen, "feeling severed from humanity, wondering how the charm of solitude becomes the curse of isolation."
Ken Chen, writing about Hong Kong ("City Out of Breath"), ponders in-crowd isolation from a "sidewalk wet with people" -- "The residents of Kowloon speed around with the same look on their faces, as if they're irked at their bodies for not being cars." Is our very capacity for focusing minutely jammed with static in such a rush? Perhaps. Alan Shapiro, in "Why Write?", laments his human condition after his brain-quirks are diagnosed as ADD; the psychologist he consults with tells him that "your ADD manifests itself in three ways. You have trouble starting tasks. You have trouble staying on task. And you have trouble finishing tasks." Uh-oh! Anyone relate with that? ;-D
Insights whack writers at the oddest times; Philip Larkin, mentioned in Eugene Goodheart's "Whistling in the Dark", would wake "in the night 'groping back to bed after a piss ... startled by ... the moon's cleanliness.'" As we age, interrupted sleep can become the norm; Goodheart pondrers that "Writing comes out of the disturbances in our lives, or maybe it is writing itself that is the disturbance, an unwillingness to take our daily existence for granted." Thus, the lucid moon ...
Extinction, though, hones the focus: several writers offer stories of loss -- of a mother, a beloved dog, oneself. Marjorie Williams' "A Matter of Life and Death" tells of her sudden awareness of a lump in her belly that grows ... and grows. Anyone facing a serious illness will empathize with her terror, the rapidly piling lessons about how to navigate the not-funhouse of rapid medical deployment, and her ferocious love of life when its days are numbered in months. "Sometimes," she writes, "I feel immortal: whatever happens to me now, I've earned the knowledge some people never gain, that my span is finite, and I still have the chance to rise, and rise, to life's generosity. But at other times I feel trapped, cursed by my specific awareness of the guillotine blade poised above my neck ... The knowledge that time's expenditure is important, that it is up to you, is one of the headiest freedoms you will ever feel."
Other essays explore the craven overlay of celebrity worship, a left-handed man's loss of both the use of his dominant hand and his old shame at being a leftie, Saul Bellow's influence through his largely plotless but brilliantly peopled fiction, and the experience of being in a 'grief group' in which one member can't speak of anything but his wife's clothes, moldering in a closet as he mourns outside its door.
I love this series. It's a gem.
"To satisfy funders, modern sex research is always framed in terms of disease or dysfunction." (Laurie Abraham, "Kinsey and Me") [Too bad sexual joy is so understudied and underfunded!]
Poe Ballantine, in "501 Minutes to Christ": "Without the distraction of television, that life-support system for people with no lives, I sit for a long while, steeping in the sudden revelation of my own stagnancy." Languishing in a new town after a long bus rude, Ballantine notices that "On the street, as it is in nature, 99 percent of all confrontations are settled or avoided by gesture, expression, and appearance, most of it false bluster." [Whew -- good to know ... and I'd love to learn how he came up with that 99%.] Television to this writer is "like pornography ... the news is a lurid concoction that panders to the basest emotions." Even so, in a cockroach-skittled motel room, he can't resist the lure of the screen, "feeling severed from humanity, wondering how the charm of solitude becomes the curse of isolation."
Ken Chen, writing about Hong Kong ("City Out of Breath"), ponders in-crowd isolation from a "sidewalk wet with people" -- "The residents of Kowloon speed around with the same look on their faces, as if they're irked at their bodies for not being cars." Is our very capacity for focusing minutely jammed with static in such a rush? Perhaps. Alan Shapiro, in "Why Write?", laments his human condition after his brain-quirks are diagnosed as ADD; the psychologist he consults with tells him that "your ADD manifests itself in three ways. You have trouble starting tasks. You have trouble staying on task. And you have trouble finishing tasks." Uh-oh! Anyone relate with that? ;-D
Insights whack writers at the oddest times; Philip Larkin, mentioned in Eugene Goodheart's "Whistling in the Dark", would wake "in the night 'groping back to bed after a piss ... startled by ... the moon's cleanliness.'" As we age, interrupted sleep can become the norm; Goodheart pondrers that "Writing comes out of the disturbances in our lives, or maybe it is writing itself that is the disturbance, an unwillingness to take our daily existence for granted." Thus, the lucid moon ...
Extinction, though, hones the focus: several writers offer stories of loss -- of a mother, a beloved dog, oneself. Marjorie Williams' "A Matter of Life and Death" tells of her sudden awareness of a lump in her belly that grows ... and grows. Anyone facing a serious illness will empathize with her terror, the rapidly piling lessons about how to navigate the not-funhouse of rapid medical deployment, and her ferocious love of life when its days are numbered in months. "Sometimes," she writes, "I feel immortal: whatever happens to me now, I've earned the knowledge some people never gain, that my span is finite, and I still have the chance to rise, and rise, to life's generosity. But at other times I feel trapped, cursed by my specific awareness of the guillotine blade poised above my neck ... The knowledge that time's expenditure is important, that it is up to you, is one of the headiest freedoms you will ever feel."
Other essays explore the craven overlay of celebrity worship, a left-handed man's loss of both the use of his dominant hand and his old shame at being a leftie, Saul Bellow's influence through his largely plotless but brilliantly peopled fiction, and the experience of being in a 'grief group' in which one member can't speak of anything but his wife's clothes, moldering in a closet as he mourns outside its door.
I love this series. It's a gem.
March 13, 2017
The theme of this collection is loss, grief, and death. The writing is excellent but overall this is a dark book.
July 11, 2007
I'm a Best American Essay junkie. I spend all year waiting for the new edition. I read it feverishly and all at once. I take notes in the margins and copy my favorites essays to distribute to other writerly friends. I re-read at least four essays from the collection a dozen times.
Not this year.
I appreciate Lauren Slater's attention to death and dying--we spend a lot of energy in America trying to avoid that unpleasantness: It's gauche to talk about dying. Sickness reeks of weakness and lack of self-will. And getting old is, well, unforgivable.
So I understand Slater's desire to turn our eye to the hard stuff of living, namely dying. I think I would have been moved by many of these essays individually had I come across them in a sea of more mundane information. But collected here, they feel grim. The pile of dead pets and parents, lost mothers and mentors, friends and spouses, left me feeling melancholy and agitated, not to mention entirely filled with dread should I ever get sick myself.
Which brings me to one thing I really *did* appreciate about these essays--the personal renditions of what we publically call the "health care crisis." Both Marjorie Williams in her essay "A Matter of Life and Death" and David Rieff in his essay "Illness as More Than Metaphor" make clear the importance of being important if you're sick--having money and knowing the right people can save your life, or at least give you more time. Their critique of the health care system helps me understand why this is such an important political issue. As a young person unfettered by any sort of terminal illness it's hard to always put my finger on what, exactly, is wrong with healthcare or why my paycheck takes such a hit for the rising costs of insurance. I can tell you I'll be paying better attention after these morality tales.
And, after all my muttering, I will give a shout-out to my three favorites--Emily Bernard for her "Teaching the N-Word", Michele Murano for "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood" and Sam Pickering for "George."
Not this year.
I appreciate Lauren Slater's attention to death and dying--we spend a lot of energy in America trying to avoid that unpleasantness: It's gauche to talk about dying. Sickness reeks of weakness and lack of self-will. And getting old is, well, unforgivable.
So I understand Slater's desire to turn our eye to the hard stuff of living, namely dying. I think I would have been moved by many of these essays individually had I come across them in a sea of more mundane information. But collected here, they feel grim. The pile of dead pets and parents, lost mothers and mentors, friends and spouses, left me feeling melancholy and agitated, not to mention entirely filled with dread should I ever get sick myself.
Which brings me to one thing I really *did* appreciate about these essays--the personal renditions of what we publically call the "health care crisis." Both Marjorie Williams in her essay "A Matter of Life and Death" and David Rieff in his essay "Illness as More Than Metaphor" make clear the importance of being important if you're sick--having money and knowing the right people can save your life, or at least give you more time. Their critique of the health care system helps me understand why this is such an important political issue. As a young person unfettered by any sort of terminal illness it's hard to always put my finger on what, exactly, is wrong with healthcare or why my paycheck takes such a hit for the rising costs of insurance. I can tell you I'll be paying better attention after these morality tales.
And, after all my muttering, I will give a shout-out to my three favorites--Emily Bernard for her "Teaching the N-Word", Michele Murano for "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood" and Sam Pickering for "George."
February 26, 2007
First of all, everyone I know should probably go read Michele Morano's essay "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood." If you have a single psychologists' impulse in your body, you will find yourself yelling advice from time to time, but it's worth it. Extremely clever.
There are several other good pieces, although I have caveats with all of them. "501 Minutes to Christ" makes me glad I stayed in school, for example. The writing life apparently sucks from many angles.
Anyway, for what it is, this year's edition is great.
There are several other good pieces, although I have caveats with all of them. "501 Minutes to Christ" makes me glad I stayed in school, for example. The writing life apparently sucks from many angles.
Anyway, for what it is, this year's edition is great.
February 5, 2010
These essays are all well written, but I found the recurring theme of death and dying, repetitious and tiresome. I guess I just expected more diversity from a collection of the year that drew from writers across America. There seemed a great variety to choose from when viewing the section listing notable essays written in 2005. This collection did get off to a strong start with: Kinsey and Me, 501 Minutes To Christ, and Teaching The N-Word. Then came a long procession of stories pertaining to the process of dying, dwindling my enjoyment to a two star rating.
April 27, 2011
I'm not ranking the entire collection here but offering the five star rating for just one essay called "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood" by Michele Morano. It's a masterful piece because it takes the subjunctive mood of the Spanish language and weaves its rules and uses through a meditation on travel, long distance, study abroad, and mental health issues. I won't say specifically which because as I recall it comes as a surprise. This piece is worth seeking out to see how amazing the essay can be as a genre and for those interested in languages, writing, travel, and word craft.
June 27, 2007
A hit or miss collection. Essays that surprised or delighted me are these: "501 Minutes to Christ" (Poe Ballantine), "Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive" (Michele Morano), "Confessions of a Left-Handed Man" (Peter Selgin), and "Group Grief" (Lily Tuck). This anthology introduced to me these writers, so it has done its job.
December 28, 2008
My least favorite of the series so far. Slater chose some I wouldn't even consider essays, and she chose an unusual number dealing with illness and death. However, there were a few gems in the mix, including Marjorie Williams "A Matter of Life and Death," and Adam Gopnik's "Death of a Fish" (see what I mean about theme?)
January 31, 2016
Pretty good prose, but some of it seems written for the purpose of inclusion in year-end collections like the one on offer. The references to insidery writing clubs and retreats just smacks of back-rubbing and favoritism. I am not eager to gather up all of these collections when I see that sort of self-dealing.
July 4, 2007
Strong collection overall. Seems like a wider range of perspectives and topics than in past years, and the writing is stronger. Highlights: Emily Bernard's "Teaching the N-Word" and Sam Pickering's "George."
September 11, 2007
This isn't much help, but while I don't remember the details of most of these essays, I read every single one and enjoyed them. Probably the same thing I could say about most positive events in my life.
September 22, 2016
I suppose that's why they're referred to as the best essays ... I picked this book up on a whim on my way out of the library (I was looking for a light paperback that would travel well), and I've been very pleasantly surprised with the essays I've read so far.
May 24, 2009
kudos to the editor - these miscellaneous, unrelated essays are sequenced like a mix tape: a common name or theme popping up in the next, imposing an artificial but pleasing sense of order and commonality...
May 16, 2007
Some essays were a little boring, but it explores a variety of subjects and voices; so its good if you are looking for examples of how to improve your own writing
July 14, 2007
A good way to catch up on the New Yorker articles I've passed over (the cartoons are so much faster to read) the past year.
October 12, 2007
I've always found Lauren Slater's writing to be more whining than literature, and here she's gone and gathered a whole collection of whining.
January 13, 2008
I love this series. Especially 1998's edition. Last year's is good too.
January 8, 2015
These essays were indeed very good, although Slater picked A LOT of essays about death. Spouses, pets, oneself... did no one write any happy essays that year? Still though, good. Obvi.
June 4, 2009
Lauren Slater is brave in her intro.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews