Joan Didion

'Charlotte au Chocolat' in Harvard Square

Elizabeth Benedict | Posted 04.30.2012

Read More: Joan Didion, Harvard, Charlotte Au Chocolat, Upstairs at the Pudding, Charlotte Silver, Upstairs in the Square, Book Reviews, Books News
Elizabeth Benedict

This slender memoir -- not in richness but size -- is about food, love, loss, the Harvard-heavy social structure of Cambridge; about growing up alone in a crowded room; and about the lessons that pass from mother to daughter.

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Caitlin Flanagan and Joan Didion: Writers and Mothers

Nancy Doyle Palmer | Posted 03.21.2012

Read More: Joan Didion Blue Nights, Joan Didion, Caitlin Flanagan, Nora Ephron, Mommy Wars, The Atlantic, Girl Land, Pauline Kael, Media News
Nancy Doyle Palmer

Caitlin Flanagan goes there -- the third rail of women talking about other women -- the kind of stuff we lower our voices to share -- she goes after Joan Didion's portrayal of herself as a mother. With all due respect.

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Joan Didion: Late in Life

Joe Woodward | Posted 03.11.2012

Read More: Resilient, Joan Didion, Grief, Literary Fiction, Memoir, Aging in America, Old Age, Blue Nights, Books News
Joe Woodward

Beyond the raw details of her daughter's death, beyond her grasp to understand its aftermath and its applied metaphor, Blue Nights deals with the physical "dismantling" of Didion herself.

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The Best-Selling Books In Southern California

Posted 12.18.2011

Read More: Joan Didion, California Bestsellers, Sciba, Just Kids, Bestselling Books in Socal, Bookweb, Diane Keaton, Patti Smith, Blue Nights, Los Angeles News

The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association has released the bestselling books at local, independent bookstores for the sales week end...

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10 Pop Culture Quotes: The Santa Ana Winds

The Huffington Post | Lucy Blodgett | Posted 12.01.2011

Read More: Joan Didion, Bad Religion, Santa Ana Wind Quotes, Wind in La, Ben Lee, Legends of the Santa Ana Winds, La Wind, Less Than Zero, Santa Ana Wind, Raymond Chandler, Los Angeles Quotes, Los Angeles News

The legend of the Santa Ana winds has infused both residents and storytellers in Los Angeles for decades. Perhaps most memorably, author Joan Didio...

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The Secrets of Symbols: This Artweek.LA (November 28 - December 4, 2011)

Bill Bush | Posted 01.29.2012

Read More: Craig Krull Gallery, Joan Didion, Kenneth Anger, Jim Morrison, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Hung Liu, Julian Wasser, Daniel Martin Diaz, David Lloyd, Ed Ruscha, La Luz De Jesus, Melissa Meier, George Herms, Jack Nicholson, Edmund Teske, Arts News
Bill Bush

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Literary Seductions

Allison Hill | Posted 11.29.2011

Read More: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Future of Reading, Books, Haruki Murakami, Literary Seductions, The Future of Books, Seduction, Amazon Kindle, Vroman's Bookstore, Bookstores, Fitzgerald, David Sedaris, Joan Didion, Mark Danielewski, Digital Content, Allison Hill, Reading, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Books News
Allison Hill

I once slept with a man because he gave me a copy of Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Before you judge me, read the book. It's lyrical and seductive and changes the way you think about reality, about life.

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Publishing's Renewed Holiday Push With Memoirs, an Enduring Genre

David Tereshchuk | Posted 01.22.2012

Read More: Holiday Reading, Publishing, Memoirs, Books, Frank Mccourt, E-Books, Malachy McCourt, Mary Karr, Sir Harold Evans, Joan Didion, Condoleezza Rice, James Frey, Ellen Degeneres, Diane Keaton, Best Sellers, Books News
David Tereshchuk

The publishing industry has now fully readied itself for the holidays, with offerings that include yet more aggressively-promoted slices of first-person recollection.

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Blue Nights and the Solace of Art

Nina Sankovitch | Posted 01.17.2012

Read More: New York Times Book Review, Joan Didion, Recovery, Art, The Sea, Grief, Sorrow, Books, John Banville, Healing, Renewal, Blue Nights, Books News
Nina Sankovitch

Blue Nights is the story of Joan Didion's craving for communion between the "I" of her individual event of loss and grief, and the "we" of its universal experience.

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Easy Reader: Is Joan Didion's Blue Nights Way Too Blue?

David Finkle | Posted 01.07.2012

Read More: Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne, Blue Nights, Blue Nights Review, Joan Didion Blue Nights, Blue Nights Joan Didion, Joan Didion Blue Nights Review, Books News
David Finkle

In discoursing on her daughter's death -- and after having analyzed in print her reaction to a husband's demise -- Joan Didion is absolutely dealing with reality, but is she dealing with everyone's reality?

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Joan Didion Reads Aloud From 'Blue Nights'

Posted 01.02.2012

Read More: Blue Nights Griffin Dunne, Joan Didion, Joan Didion Blue Nights, Video, Griffin Dunne Joan Didion, Blue Nights, Culture News

Joan Didion has been given a gift with words and a surfeit of tragedy to write about. The contiguous deaths of her husband, filmmaker John Dunne, and ...

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EXCLUSIVE: The Role Of Tragedy In Joan Didion's Life

Posted 12.27.2011

Read More: Joan Didion Tragedy, Joan Didion, Video, Sara Davidson, Joan Didion Book, Byliner, John Dunne, Joan Didion Memoirs, Joan, Blue Nights, Quintana Didion, Books News

Tragedy in Joan Didion’s life became a common theme of her writing. "The Year of Magical Thinking," her memoir about the death of her husband John D...

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Joan Didion On Her New Memoir

Publisher's Week | Carrie Tuhy | Posted 12.07.2011

Read More: Joan Didion Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion, Joan Didion New Memoir, Joan Didion Blue Nights, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion Memoir, Blue Nights, Fifty News

"This was a much harder book to write than The Year of Magical Thinking," says Joan Didion about Blue Nights (to be released by Alfred A. Knopf on Nov...

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Famous Authors Related by Blood or Marriage

Dave Astor | Posted 10.21.2011

Read More: Daphne Du Maurier, Stephen King, Svengali, John Cheever, Henry James, Mary Shelley, Twilight Zone, Joan Didion, Jane Eyre, George Du Maurier, Famous Authors, Angela's Ashes, Bronte Sisters, Wuthering Heights, Frank Mccourt, Alice Walker, Alexandre Dumas, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, Books News
Dave Astor

The Bronte sisters weren't alone in blood being as thick as ink.

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Famous Single Ladies Hotel Could Be NYC's Next Landmark

dnainfo.com | Posted 09.12.2011

Read More: Landmarks Preservation Commission, Upper East Side, Joan Didion, Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly, Lexington Avenue, New York Real Estate, Candace Bergen, Liza Minnelli, Sylvia Plath, Ny Real Esate, New York News

MANHATTAN -- Before they were stars, Grace Kelly, Joan Crawford, Liza Minnelli, Candace Bergen and many others seeking fame in New York lived at the B...

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Literary Love Letters To Los Angeles

Posted 09.07.2011

Read More: James Ellroy, Joan Didion, Steve Erickson, Christopher Isherwood, Charles Bukowski, The Big Sleep, Literary Love Letters, Bret Easton Ellis, Zerovlle, Los Angeles, Raymond Chandler, Books News

From Flavorwire: A while back we did a post on literary love letters to NYC, but we knew at some point we should honor the entertainment capital of...

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Required Reading: Devastatingly Sad Books

flavorwire.com | Posted 07.12.2011

Read More: Ernest Hemingway, Emma Donoghue, She's Come Undone, Room, Lorrie Moore, Sad Books, The Year of Magical Thinking, Susan Sheehan, Atonement, Wally Lamb, The Road, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow?S Story, Ian McEwan, Islands in the Stream, Cormac McCarthy, Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro, Books News

We’re the first to admit that, sometimes, the best cure for a hard week, a long day or just a rainy weekend is a really sad book....

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Unlikely Heroines In Literature

flavorwire.com | Posted 07.09.2011

Read More: Joan Didion, Unlikely Heroines in Literature, Canterbury Tales, Anna Karenina, The Gin Closet, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Leo Tolstoy, David Copperfield, Heroines, The Wife of Bath, Chaucer, Books News

Sometimes even the most literary among us need some suggestions. And who better to oblige than the authors themselves? Welcome to Bookshelf, wherein w...

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Literary Los Angeles: A Bookworm's Guide To The City

AOL Travel News | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Santa Monica Pier, Raymond Chandler, Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House, Angels Flight, Pink's Hot Dog Stand, Sara Davidson, Musso and Frank Grill, La Getaways, Hector Tobar, The Formosa Cafe, Watts Towers, Joan Didion, MGM Studios, Highland Park Police Station, Los Angeles News

Many writers have brought unique outlooks to their visions of Los Angeles. From classic authors like Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion to modern ones l...

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Dining Royally: The King's Speech

Regina Weinreich | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Tom Ford, Christine Baranski, Jerry Garcia, Stephen Daldry, DeLeon Tequila, Stella Powell Jones, Newt Gingrich, Amir Bar-Lev, Joan Didion, The King's Speech, Harvey Weinstein, Helena Bonham Carter, Wallis Simpson, Colin Firth, Tom Hooper, Geoffrey Rush, Candice Bergen, Entertainment News
Regina Weinreich

At "21" last Tuesday, it was a case of multiple events. Newt Gingrich graciously held the door for me as Joan Didion stood in the foyer of the legenda...

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Are Essays Viable in the Twenty-First Century?

Patrick Madden | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Joan Didion, David Shields, Best American Essays, S Quotidiana, Essays, Books, John McPhee, Reality Hunger, Montaigne, Essayist, Books News
Patrick Madden

The term essay itself has fallen into disfavor. Just mention the word and watch people's eyes glaze over, hear them stammer out apologetic platitudes and poorly veiled excuses.

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My Failure at SEO: A Writer's Confession about Internet Marketing: Or, Why You Probably Won't Find Me Easily Online

Tamar Chansky | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Google, Joan Didion, Internet, Writers, Marketing, Malcolm Gladwell, Ann Beattie, Seo, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Pr, Key Words, Technology News
Tamar Chansky

SEO is stealth, it's sleek; it's all about titles that are short, searchable and to the point. It doesn't cater to the clever book title or site name, it could care less about how erudite you are.

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Hanging with Motherhood Writer-Director Katherine Dieckmann

Thelma Adams | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Manhattan, Women, Women in Film, Mothers and Sons, Motherhood, Uma Thurman, Parenting, Mothers and Daughters, Screenwriting, Parenthood, Punk, Screenwriters, Mike-Leigh, Katherine Dieckmann, Joan Didion, Women Directors, Working Moms, Entertainment News
Thelma Adams

I was frustrated by the absence of movies where a mother is the lead and her issues are the film's main focus, where she is a significant character expressing her soul and existence.

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Memoirs are the New Novel: Here's to Life with Sudden Death

Elizabeth Benedict | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Alison Bechdel, Harvard, Joan Didion, Memoir, Dave Eggers, Mentors, Health Care, Books News
Elizabeth Benedict

It's a compelling story, but it's Downing's intelligence, his bone-dry wit, his carefully measured sorrow, carefully controlled rage, and beautifully wrought prose that make this memoir such a standout.

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Dominick Dunne (1925-2009): A Lovely Man Who Took No Prisoners -- Starting with Himself

Jesse Kornbluth | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Griffin Dunne, Joan Didion, Frank Sinatra, Liz Smith, Tina Brown, Dominick Dunne, Dominick Dunne: After the Party, Vanity Fair, Oregon, Media News
Jesse Kornbluth

The story is no puzzle -- if Dunne's account is remotely accurate, the recipe for early success and midlife failure was developed at home.

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