DeDion Reviews

This book gives you detailed information on HOW to breastfeed. This is the only book I've seen that does this. It tells you where to put your arms and hands and how to position the baby...the things you really need to know when there's no one there to show you. The illustrations are extremely helpful when you've got a hungry baby in your arms.

This book answers the questions that all moms have. Is the baby getting enough milk, how often should baby eat, how do I store expressed breastmilk...it's all in this book in an easy-to-understand format.

I have referred to this book countless times and have found it to be invaluable to me as a nursing mom.

The best breastfeeding book on the market.
A must for every new mom.
Buy it before you deliver.
I wish I had not waited this long to purchase it.
Sue Tiller's book helps you to breastfeeding success. It is user friendly and it stays flat on the table so you never lose your place while holding a squirmy and hungry baby.
A truly excellent book.

I read this book so many years ago, but I just now realized I had never shared my opnions about it. I had lived in Miami for about eight years, and I think I was in my 5th year or so when I finally heard about "Miami" by Joan Didion. It was only after I had finally moved to the Beach that I happened upon it, at Kafka's. At any rate, it is an excellent book. I think about it every time I hear on the news about the bumbling CIA or news of Castro makes the NYTimes. Incidentally, 1987 also saw the publication of "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face," by Edna Buchanan, another equally excellent non-fiction book about this city. I also highly recommend "A Book of Common Prayer" by Ms. Didion.

I've got a bone to pick with Joan Didion, but first let me say that "Miami" is a simply brilliant piece of noir journalism that, in every paragraph, reflects a different aspect of "the Capital of Latin America." Odd that 1987 saw three major non-fiction Miami treatments, all differently motivated: David Rieff's "Going to Miami: Exiles, Tourists and Refugees in the New America," T.D. Allman's "Miami: City of the Future," and Didion's book. Yeah, yeah, at the time, Miami was hot hot hot, Crockett and Tubbs were in the middle of their run, but...Iran-Contragate was also playing itself out, and Miami was an epicenter of Reagan-era, better-dead-than-Red, Contra War intrigue. Didion captures the period beautifully in suitably ominous, conspiratorial tones. She introduces us to a cast of chilling characters--no, wait: she means for us to UNDERSTAND her characters as the driven, chilling, formidable products of "el exilio" and "la lucha"--and leaves no doubt that these are serious men, men who "get things done," men capable of, well, anything.

And my bone? Didion is a wonderful writer who cannot, however, resist long, convoluted, patience-trying Germanic sentences, frontloaded with the universe, embellishing adjective after adjective, wending their way down the page, forestalling all gratification, clarity, or meaning, until finally hitting us between the eyes with the final word-punchline, which invariably leads our eyes to course back up the page in an effort to reconstruct, to rediscover "just where were we going with this." Small price to pay for so delicious a book.

As a 23 year resident in Miami (from NYC) I was astonished at Didion's eloquent articulation of what I haven't been able to describe but have pondered over these many years--the cultural and cognitive disconnect between native Americans and disgruntled Cuban exiles. They talk about LA, but Miami really is Never-Never Land with impossibly obdurant and involuntary immigrants who have no clue or stake in the American values of reasoned discourse, free speech, and fair play and no desire to abandon the cultural attributes that have allowed them to suffer under one form of tyranny or another for a long long time. This books explains what they are thinking--the Cubans--and why they behave the way they do. Well-researched, accurate, and beautifully crafted prose.

Arguably, this is one of a handful of great modern american novels from the last quarter of the 20th century. from its remarkable opening chapter, it weaves a hypnotic spell, with didion's characteristic romanticizing of despair and existential angst. this is a novel of sentences. sentences to be savored, and read aloud. sentences without one extraneous word; as balanced as poetry, and utterly perfect from the first syllable to the last. didion remains one of the few writers who can comment on a scene by way of description. the details she focusses upon serve to illustrate her vision in a manner only a small handful of authors can manage. it is the mark of a master, and this is, without question, her masterpiece. it is didion's reportage and essays that have made her reputation, but this very challenging and utterly flawless novel is the equal to her non fiction prose. it is not a novel for the casual reader. however, for any student of delusion, and any admirer of serious literature of the highest order, a book of common prayer is an essential text.

Didion's opening line ... "I shall be her witness" says it all.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As with all of Ms. Didion's books, I take my time with them, to truly cherish her writing style. I am a huge fan of her use of characterization, as well as her use of grammer. (Besides this book, I regularly recommend Play It As It Lays and Miami, two other great books by Ms. Didion.) Everytime I think of this book, I think of how the brave narrator, in the course of the developments of the novel, regrets, with the last line in the book, the opening statement she made in the book's lead. One of the all-time best books I've ever read, you have got to give this book a read, too.

California is changing, and it upsets old folks.

Didion is clearly upset, like a variety of folks ranging in age from those of tender young years to fossilized old fogies. They are hurt, bewildered, confused and made mad by change. Arizons is flooded with refugees from California who want to go back to "the good old days" -- they have utterly restored Prescott into a brand new Victorian town of the 1890s, and they are now restoring the glory of the 1920s and 1930s in central Phoenix.

Like many of the elderly in mind, spirit and outlook, Didion regrets what is past. She doesn't seem to understand that even if the future is different, it may be better. It's a story of her family intertwined with modern California; both her ancestors and California are examples of people constantly on the move in the search for something better -- even if they don't know what that "something" might be, and even if they lose their heritage by moving.

Granted, Didion is the "intellectual" of the family. This book gave me the distinct impression she'd be much happier, fulfilled and content if her ancestors had never left Alsace. Somehow I doubt if she speaks German -- she wouldn't go back to Alsace unless she spoke German, just to show the Frenchies that her past is more important than their conquests. So she did the next best thing, and now lives in New York.

As a genuine New Yorker, which is not "her" city so she doesn't mind how it changes, she offers a long recital of California happenings as seen by an original family and finds the state much lacking since her departure. Any one of us, and I'm no exception, can return to our "hometown" and find similar faults.

It's a nice book for tired old people waiting out their empty years in sterile nursing homes where they lament the passing of the past. Even homebound grouches may find it interesting, especially if they live in California.

There are flashes of insight, such as her descriptions of the Alameda Corridor, and the Lakewood school sex scandal; but, she fails to draw any meaning from these events. Her descriptions of the aircraft industry are interesting -- and exactly the same as I heard in the 1960s when I worked in the aircraft industry. Ho hum, it's a pity she never helped put airplanes together.

Perhaps it's because she doesn't understand herself, or her ancestors. She is the epitome of the quintessential Californian, the daughter of a long line of "California" ancestors even when they lived on the Virginia/Carolina frontier in 1766. As a Canadian, I'd describe her as everything we expect Californians to represent; as a Californian, she is blind to personal introspection as well as understanding herself and her state.

If you like moaning about the past, you'll love this book. Didion finds a lot to regret, and not much of the modern to understand, an approach which many find attractive. If you can read through her words, uncover the meanings hidden in her chronicle of complaint, you'll discover the basics which made California a great state.

I grew up in the mountains south of Yosemite in the 1950's and 60's and have lived here ever since. I've worked as a logger, carpenter, and building designer and now spend much of my time hiking the trails in the High Sierra (not in that Arizona nursing home yet).
So, anyway, I've had a lifetime spent drinking in the reality that is California. Reading Joan Didion's book has furthered and edified my knowledge, thoughts, and intuitions of this region. Reviewers who think she is upset or complaining are missing the point. Didion delves deep and helps people like me fill in some blanks to this fascinating human comedy.

As an Easterner who has lived for the past few years in the SF Bay Area, I have been forced to deal with my own confusion over a number of bewildering contradictions in the psyches of people here, which are unlike anything I have experienced before. I therefore drank this book down in one evening (and haven't as yet gone back to savor it on a deeper level). People who have not had my experience might be less entranced. However, I recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding, on a deeper level, the results of the recent recall election in California.

This classic 1968 work is justly renowned as Joan Didion's finest collection of essays. Its central theme - and the theme behind much of what Didion writes - is the atomisation of American culture, the way in which things have fallen apart and left millions adrift from the cultural and ethical moorings that their ancestors took for granted. 33 years later, it is ironic to look back on the period that the writer depicts with such grim pathos when it is celebrated as a time of idealism and freedom by the survivors of the sixties. Many pieces in the first and third sections of the book ("Lifestyles in the Golden Land" and "Seven Places of the Mind") seem rather dated; the piece which made the most impression on this reviewer was the least ambitious of the group; to me, the portrait of Comrade Laski of the CPUSA-ML is a tiny masterpiece of irony. The pieces from the second section ("Personals")were much more enjoyable, especially "On Keeping a Notebook" and "On Self-Respect." Overall, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" is more memorable for the author's endearing prose style than for the individual essays.

Decades after the fact, this collection of essays is a bit of a period piece, but some of it holds up quite well. The subject of the famous title story -- which first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1967 -- is about the Haight Street scene and, more to the point, the breakdown of human connection that Didion believed that scene represented. She is similarly gloomy about New York in "Goodbye to All That," and about California in "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream." Though she was in her late 20s and early 30s when she wrote this material, she clearly saw much of what was going on in the 1960s as the activities of a different generation from her own. In any case it's these pieces, along with one about John Wayne, that stand out here, and remain, after all these years, pretty close to extraordinary. Some of the other material (a piece about Joan Baez, etc.) is less memorable. I bought this in the hardback Modern Library edition with a useless introductory essay by Elizabeth Hardwick (but a great photo of Didion on the front cover). Should've gone with paper.

Joan Didion set the precedent for contemporary non-fiction in this, her most famous series of essays about American life. Though some of them are a bit dated (especially for younger readers who may not have directly witnessed the unfolding of the 60s), they do represent a wide cross-section of the best and worst of our society. "Slouching Towards Bethelem," the title essay, is written with such a deadpan manner it's hard not to laugh at loud at some points (Example: when a strung out kid asks Didion her age and she replies "32", he pauses then reflects, "Don't worry...there's old hippies, too.") But Didion is more than a casual observer of events...she really delves into the history of California and its people, so this is less a "light" read, but enjoyable and educational nonetheless.

First, I would like to examine the character of Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-ah). In my life, I have never read about a character so lacking in dynamism as Maria. This is a woman who is herded through her life as a cow is to slaughter. Starting with a sour marriage, she must deal with (or, at least, experience) the deaths of her parents, a stagnant career, a substance abuse problem, the hypocrisy of her friends, the alienation of her daughter, an insubstantial culture, an abortion, a divorce, prison, and the suicide of a friend. Oh how my heart bleeds for poor Mar-eye-ah.

When faced with these tribulations, Maria is completely unresourceful. In fact, she is completely inept as a human-being. The only time in the novel that she asserts herself is in the first chapter when she finds herself locked up in the loony-bin. It is here that she is able to express her philosophy, to wit: "nothing matters." Now, if you can call Nihilism affirmative or assertive, then this is the only indication in the book that Maria is even remotely human. I am not saying that one must be an aggressive maniac to be human, but one must balance the assertiveness with the apathy to provide a realistic character and an interesting story.

It may be argued that Maria does attempt to gain control of her life through simulating her conflicts in the microcosm of the California freeway. As Maria careens recklessly through four lanes of traffic while cracking an egg on the steering wheel, Didion would have us believe that this symbolic act is one of pure desperation, the desperation of one who has tried to cope with the multitude of disappointments that each of us must face in life, but has failed miserably. I suppose a sympathetic reader might be willing to believe that Maria deftly avoids striking the other cars on the freeway as she would like to swiftly and painlessly solve the problems of her pathetic life. Although there might be some merit to this argument, I disagree. I see a woman with such incredibly self-destructive tendencies that I am surprised she did not do herself in years ago. She navigates her Corvette through traffic, not as a symbolic act of courage and resolve, but as a symbolic act of cowardice and suicide.

Why did Didion write this novel? I might be able to accept the fact that Maria was a slug if Didion, through the character, sought to impart some universal truth to the reader. While reading the novel, I was compelled to question the author's motives. Why is Maria so lethargic? Why are the other characters so completely amoral? Is the story autobiographical in any way? Why did Didion write this story, thus inadvertently making me suffer through it? After days of struggling with these questions, I discovered the answer, the only logical answer. It is a product of 60's pop culture. Didion's novel has no more artistic value than Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup paintings. The novel is nothing more than a compilation of taboos which would mean that, at the time of publication, it would be really "cool" to read because it would offend the establishment. It seems that Didion's only purpose in writing the novel was to shock as many people as possible by creating a hedonistic world populated by tragic people, thus launching herself into the pop spotlight as an innovator or risk-taker, all the while hoping that the literary community would buy into her farce. Amazingly enough, she succeeded.

The story is as hollow and forgettable as the character the book is about. It's an easy read, and not exactly bad writing, but it didn't grab me and it's not going in my permanent library. If you like reading about vapid people scrapping it out in the film industry, you might like this book. If you like reading about people quite lost in their own lives, you might like this book. Otherwise, find something else.

There is, wrote Charles Baudelaire, a vice which is uglier, more wicked and filthier than any other, a vice which he called "L'Ennui". This is a stronger term than the mere "boredom" which is its literal meaning, because the word also implies a state of indifference and moral and spiritual deadness. It is a state of mind frequently invoked in Baudelaire's poetry, and one which is also at the centre of Joan Didion's novel.

The central character is Maria Wyeth, a Hollywood actress in her early thirties. Fate has, in many ways, been unkind to her- her mother died in a car crash, her career is in trouble, her marriage to an uncaring husband is also failing and she has a mentally-handicapped daughter. Maria reacts by retreating into the sterile world occupied by most of the novel's other characters, one of casual and promiscuous sex, drink, drugs and "Ennui", both in its literal and its extended Baudelairean senses.

Told in a series of very short vignettes, the novel traces the progress of the disintegration of Maria's life. She is bullied into an abortion by her husband. (It is interesting that a novel by a woman writer treats abortion not as a woman's right but as another weapon of male dominance). Her marriage ends in divorce. In the final scene her moral nihilism means that she deliberately fails to prevent the suicide of a friend.

Much of the book is set in the deserts of southern California and Nevada, and Maria spends much of her time driving on long but aimless car journeys through this landscape. The imagery of the desert is clearly used to suggest the aridity of the spiritual world in which the characters live, and Maria's meaningless journeys are a symbol of her inability to escape this world. It is noteworthy that although the book is set in the late sixties or early seventies, a time of great ferment and social change in America, news of the outside world plays virtually no part in the book; Miss Didion's characters seem able to shut it out completely.

The bleakness of the world inhabited by Maria and her acquaintances means that this is certainly not a feelgood novel. It is, in many ways, not an easy one to like. It is, however, certainly one worth reading.

Joan Didion's novel "Democracy," is one about American Politics and the Vietnam War, public and private live, the media, and to an extent image management. The story, however, focuses mostly on Inez Victor, the daughter of a powerful Hawaiian congressman. I personally found the book to be quite a bore, as there simply weren't many "jolts" to keep a teenager like me interested. This being said, I did enjoy a couple of things about the novel. The first would be the way that Didion inserts herself into her novels. She puts herself into the novel as a character narrating the events and inserting her own thoughts as if she was there, in the novel. I also enjoyed reading about the mysterious Jack Lovett. I felt that this character was a brilliant creation by Didion. This is simply because, although he is very close to Inez, no one ever knows what he actually does. He is described as an army officer, a man who sets up export credit programs and AID funding, and an aircraft executive. He refers to himself as a "business man." Those were probably the only two things I really enjoyed about this novel. I wouldn't recommend it as a summer reading, but if you choose to defy my wishes, then read it for stylistic analysis of Didion's writing, if anything.

Joan Didion's Democracy is more evidence that she's a writer always worth reading. I have some questions about why she chose to insert "Joan Didion" the report-writer into this story, and why she spends so much time discussing the book she decided not to write (a big epic family Hawaiian novel--but didn't James Michener or someone already do that?), but there is a really good love story here, intense and tight, with lots of gripping details about Hawaii and political campaigning

I picked this book for my engineering ethics class thinking how great it would be to read about the experience of other females in engineering. To my dismay the book was slow and repetitive. The books studies white American women in science. The data through out the book is presented in a rough research paper like format. This is not a peasant to read book. If you can identify with white American women in the scientific field, then read this book. Otherwise the focus of this book is too narrow and the authors of the book does not present any practical solutions to the problems encountered by women in the scientific field.

I read this book with tremendous interest. The stories it contains resonated in me or seemed to fit friends and colleagues. I have given Athena Unbound to family members upon graduation (from engineering school) and to my own women Chemistry students for graduation. I think it is important for my students to know what problems may lie before them and how they may be side-stepped. This book does a great job of outlining what these problems may be. Science is still a man's world. Forewarned is forearmed!

This book is one of the best books I have read on the subject of women in science. It will appeal to the general public, who tire quickly of statistic upon statistic. Instead, this book gives a broad overview of the gender issues surrounding science and approached to resolve these issues. Should be required reading in any gender or science history class, I think, though the focus is on contemporary issues not historical documentation.

This book is largely composed of Joan Didion's deeply researched -- but also deeply flawed -- articles that ran in magazines over the past 20 years. Keep in mind the dates at the beginning of each article, or you'll get lost in some of the obviously missing history, since these articles weren't well edited for current audiences.

Mainly, the articles/essays are a rehash of the evils of corporate-owned, far-right operated government in the '80s and '90s. As a rah-rah piece for the older The Nation crowd (or a primer for the younger Michael Moore/Ralph Nader fans), it's not so bad.

No one really wants to read Didion's perceptive take on partisan politics and the theatricality of the entire political process during trying, uncertain times such as these. Nevertheless, Didion shines here. She's at the top of her form -- her lean, angry prose illuminating the horrors of the United States intervention in the El Salvadorian civil war, the odd rise to power of the odd Newt Gingrich, the bewildering Reagan presidency. Though she's very much a leftie, the nature of this inquiry is into all things political, and Dukakis as much as Bush is a target for Didion's scorn. Didion is an incredible writer and a capable thinker and in general we need more political books of this ilk -- books that aspire to illuminate, educate, not obfuscate.

The ditto heads of the world will not like this book. Many of their transmuted myths are challenged by Didion. I will not bother to compile a list of their headliners and legends.
They prefer whipping boy prose. If it does not have the quasi paranoid syntax attacking liberals, then it is not worth their time.
I like Didion's book because it reveals further the disturbing triangular symbiosis between the media's "journalist", the fragile bought and sold politicos, and those who make this arrangement their reality.

Only two articles were worth-while reading: one about Doris Lessing and the other about Hollywood. The others were totally unimportant.
The author doesn't play in the same league as, for instance, a Simon Leys (about China) or an Ian Buruma (about Japan).

I can't remember what I did with my copy of this book. I either gave it to a friend or threw it in the garbage. Didion is a whiner - she comes across as the poor little rich girl, complaining about being in the studio when Paul McCartney recorded Why don't we do it in the road. Sorry Joan, I wish you could have been there when the Beatles recorded Ob la di, ob la da if the other track wasn't significant enough! Her other noteworthy tidbit is being in the recording studio with the Doors when Jim Morrison showed up late and either too high or too mental to record. Joan should know that life is full of disappointments. However, I know lots of people who would have felt it was exciting to see Morrison in person, even at his crazy worst. If you're looking to revel in the pseudo heartbreaks of a neurot, I recommend this book.

This book is definitely the "Part 2" of a series that begoins with Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and each time that i return to it I feel like I am sitting down with a dear friend that I haven't talked to in a while. Other reviewers seem to have covered the title piece quite well, but I am intrigued that nobody seems to have mentioned my favorite -"Holy Water"- a fascinating look behind the scenes at the California Water Authority. I assign this essay again and again to my environmentalist students, both for the immediate content and for the intriguing window into the seductive nature of technology -one feels that Didion comes to be horrified and walks away enthralled. You will be too.