This was a nice collection of essays, even if disjointed. There is no through-thread of any kind. I super appreciated that each had a time stamp date at the end, as certain essays, such as the one on Martha Stewart, which spends some time discussing how risky it is to name a company after a single person whose reputation can be tarnished, and know that's before her conviction for insider trading (and that in fact, it didn't hurt the business. Also, it was ahead of its time in asking if the same worry would exist for companies named after male founders.) The piece on Hemingway I thought was a bit long and uncritical of him. The piece on writing also was long, although the part about all the rejections she'd had for some stories was both insightful and I'm sure gives a feeling of commiseration to aspiring writers. The others were all great--loved the San Simeon and Nancy Reagan pieces and the essay on being rejected from Stanford (how fascinating that she had the right credits to go there, but in order to go to UC Berkeley, she had to first take a few more classes at a junior college, as they had more requirements which she hadn't ticked off.) The narrator was also lovely.

However, the introduction by Hilton Als was not only exceedingly too long (more than 30 minutes in a 4.5 hour audiobook) but he read it himself, and I don't know if the man needs an IV drop of espresso, but rarely have I experienced a more painfully tedious, monotone, and somnolent reader in my life. While I get the trend to have writers read a lot of their own writing for audio, sometimes that's a huge mistake. Many, many times I nearly didn't make it to the Didion part of the Didion audiobook, because I felt I was being tortured by Als (who incidentally, also quotes long passages from the exact essays you're about to read--to what end? To be repetitive?)

I recommend the book a lot for readers of essays, but skip the forward completely. It nearly ruins the book.

I borrowed this digital audiobook from my local library via Libby.