out june 12th!

http://www.amazon.com/Maytrees-Novel-Annie...8801&sr=8-1

This looks so wonderful!! Thanks for making my day!

I might have to read that. Thanks Jaem!

I'll be very interested to hear what folks think of this.

I dearly love Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and rather enjoyed An American Childhood, but I was not as enamored with The Living.

very nice. very nice indeed.

I am currently reading Teaching a Stone to Talk

It's a marvelous book. I'm over halfway through and am trying to slow down, because it looks like it's going to be her last one... But who really knows?

I have almost finished For The Time Being and I have to admit that it's the first Annie Dillard book I've read that didn't strike a resounding chord with me. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not that it's not good. It is still incredibly good with beautifully transcendent passages in it that take your breath away and leave you reeling from their implications, but it just hasn't had the overall impact that I've come to expect from her books.

I suppose the thing that I've been most surprised about is that, considering the spirituality that is woven through all the other books of Dillard's that I've read, she certainly focuses on the laissez-faire perspective of God that is shared by various people that figure prominently in the book, and that certainly took me by surprise. I wasn't expecting such a perspective to be plumbed to the depths that Dillard explores, and it certainly raised questions for me about what prompted Dillard to mine such a vein, to the extent that she did. Was she undergoing a crisis of faith, during the time she wrote it? Does anyone know the background story behind the writing of the book?

Despite my criticisms, For The Time Being is still a very provocative, erudite read from one of the best writers of our generation.