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balletbookworm's review
4.0
A good collection. A bit uneven. Stand-outs are Rachel Kushner’s “We Are Orphans Here” (from The New York Times Magazine), Catherine Venable Moore's “The Book of the Dead” (originally pubbed in Oxford American and Andrea Stuart’s “Travels in Pornland” (originally in Granta)
dllh's review
3.0
A good selection on the whole, with "Sparrow Needy" by Kenneth A. McClane and "Snakebit" by Alia Volz especially standing out or making me think to look for more by the authors.
eileen_critchley's review
3.0
I have read this collection every year for the past several years. Some of the essays in this edition were great and some I didn't enjoy as much; that's just the nature of this sort of thing though. I will split the difference and say ***½
kjboldon's review
3.0
Lots of great writing, with diverse topics and authors, but I can never summon love for anthologies; they feel more like duty.
ostrowk's review
I'm in love with Leslie Jamison. I hope to teach her introduction to this collection someday in my own creative nonfiction class. And her taste—earnest, political, searching—pervades her curation. Her taste is my taste. Hard to even name standout essays, but I'm still haunted by Rachel Kushner's "'We Are Orphans Here.'" Greg Marshall's "If I Only Had a Leg" was charming. June Thunderstorm's "Revenge of the Mouthbreathers: A Smoker's Manifesto" was majorly provocative. Time travel back to 2016 (rough year), and bear witness all over again.
ramonamead's review
4.0
I read this collection as "research" for my own personal essay writing. Most of the pieces in this collection made me feel like an absolute amateur! They are all powerful and well researched. There were three that felt very similar to my own style and encouraged me to keep at what I'm doing. Reading these collections is also helping me become familiar with the publications that showcase great essays.
kevinsmokler's review
4.0
I write essays professionally. So I gotta read "Best American Essays" every year as professional development. I feel the same about it most years: Some pieces are great. Some don't interest me. Usually depends a bit on the taste of the editor. But regardless, I usually average out at about 4 stars. Its more a guide to whom I should be reading in the future than a assessment of the book itself.
For this one, pay special attention to Editor Leslie Jamison's introduction, on why the essay matters in the age of Trump. Leslie Jamison is 35 and writes like she's already destined to be a legend. Eager to read her new memoir this spring.
For this one, pay special attention to Editor Leslie Jamison's introduction, on why the essay matters in the age of Trump. Leslie Jamison is 35 and writes like she's already destined to be a legend. Eager to read her new memoir this spring.
bookish_sue's review
5.0
My favorites:
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah -- The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin
Eliese Collette Goldbach -- White Horse
Alan Lightman - What Came Before the Big Bang?
Catherine Venable Moore -- The Book of the Dead
Meghan O'Gieblyn -- Dispatch from Flyover Country
I respond to the essays that connect the personal and specific to a larger American story. That said, this is the one passage I highlighted during my reading. From What Came Before the Big Bang?:
Does space go on forever, to infinity? Or is it finite but without boundary or edge, like the surface of a sphere? Either answer is disturbing, and unfathomable. Where did we come from? We can follow the lives of our parents and grandparents and their parents backward in time, back and back through he generations, until we come to some ancestor ten thousand years in the past whose DNA remains in our body. We can follow the chain of being even further back in time to the first humans, and the first primates, and the one-celled amoebas swimming about in the primordial seas, and the formation of the atmosphere, and the slow condensation of gases to create Earth. It all happened, whether we think about it or not. We quickly realize how limited we are in our experience of the world. What we see and feel with our bodies, caught midway between atoms and galaxies, is but a small swath of the spectrum, a sliver of reality.
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah -- The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin
Eliese Collette Goldbach -- White Horse
Alan Lightman - What Came Before the Big Bang?
Catherine Venable Moore -- The Book of the Dead
Meghan O'Gieblyn -- Dispatch from Flyover Country
I respond to the essays that connect the personal and specific to a larger American story. That said, this is the one passage I highlighted during my reading. From What Came Before the Big Bang?:
Does space go on forever, to infinity? Or is it finite but without boundary or edge, like the surface of a sphere? Either answer is disturbing, and unfathomable. Where did we come from? We can follow the lives of our parents and grandparents and their parents backward in time, back and back through he generations, until we come to some ancestor ten thousand years in the past whose DNA remains in our body. We can follow the chain of being even further back in time to the first humans, and the first primates, and the one-celled amoebas swimming about in the primordial seas, and the formation of the atmosphere, and the slow condensation of gases to create Earth. It all happened, whether we think about it or not. We quickly realize how limited we are in our experience of the world. What we see and feel with our bodies, caught midway between atoms and galaxies, is but a small swath of the spectrum, a sliver of reality.
escapegrace's review
4.0
I read BAE every year, and Leslie Jamison's selections were the strongest since David Foster Wallace in 2007.