These Precious Days: Essays

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The only book I’ve read of Pratchett’s is the Dutch House, which I didn’t love. So I’m really curious now to see if her essays would grab like they’ve grabbed you. Those sound lovely. I absolutely adored every minute I spent with this book. I love the way Ann Patchett writes and you can feel the love and wonder with which she views the world and the people around her

This is a sublime, poignant collection of essays that range from her love of Snoopy (the iconic Peanuts character) to discussing her choice to not have children. Then there is the heart-achingly beautiful title essay about her friendship with Sooki, Tom Hanks' assistant, who comes to live with the author during the coronavirus pandemic to receive treatment for pancreatic cancer.These Precious Days is a new collection of essays by Ann Patchett that make you think, make you feel, and may even make you cry. In between, Ann touches on her childhood, her fathers, the death of a parent, her decision to remain childless, her writing career, owning a bookstore, her marriage, and other topics. Listening to her was like sitting down with a good friend over a cup of coffee. This book of essays is very personal, many of them appearing in some form previously in The New Yorker or The Atlantic, as she talks about the relationships with her three fathers. While they all enriched her life in so many ways, I loved the relationship with her father that she only saw one week a year as she was growing up as she and her sister, Heather, flew to California, all of them crying unconsolably as they had to part. Her novel Commonwealth was probably the most autobiographical in that respect.

Oh no, knee replacement doesn’t sound fun. If you can still play competitive tennis, it can’t be that bad? In any case, it’s depressing to realise we can’t do the same we could at 20 years old. The hike looks nice. 🙂I just finished Patchett’s book last week. Review is forthcoming, although I have four other books ahead of it.