I find Danny Gregory's proselytizing about the value of daily drawing in one's sketchbook to be inspirational. Reading his books always makes me feel like drawing, without agonizing over whether my subject is "important" enough. I also love looking at artists' sketchbooks to compare their approach and subject matter to my own. This book satisfies both urges, as it provides a sampling of selections from the sketchbooks of wildly different artists. I loved the variety of the entries, ... (show more)

I find Danny Gregory's proselytizing about the value of daily drawing in one's sketchbook to be inspirational. Reading his books always makes me feel like drawing, without agonizing over whether my subject is "important" enough. I also love looking at artists' sketchbooks to compare their approach and subject matter to my own. This book satisfies both urges, as it provides a sampling of selections from the sketchbooks of wildly different artists. I loved the variety of the entries, and the feeling, upon reading it, of being given the license to snoop freely into someone else's life. Gregory sees the value of daily drawing in terms of journaling, a kind of self-exploration or expression which doesn't have an artistic point so much as it provides you with an excuse to keep drawing, without resorting to preciousness or worry over what it's going to look like. This is a point he believes in fervently, and he manages to communicate his enthusiasm infectiously. It's good therapy for a blocked artist (as so many of us are, or can be) but it goes down smoothly . . . and it's so much fun to peruse at random. (show less)

I was really affected by this book, the first of Joan Didion's I have ever read. It won't be the last. She has such a dry, matter-of-fact, deadpan style whose stillness creates tension over the roiling emotions underneath. Her anguish, confusion and muddle-headed thinking following the death of her husband and, later, her daughter, is expressed in meticulous prose that is quietly devastating. Her insights are marvelous, but it is that difficulty in grappling with one's emotions --- and the ef... (show more)

I was really affected by this book, the first of Joan Didion's I have ever read. It won't be the last. She has such a dry, matter-of-fact, deadpan style whose stillness creates tension over the roiling emotions underneath. Her anguish, confusion and muddle-headed thinking following the death of her husband and, later, her daughter, is expressed in meticulous prose that is quietly devastating. Her insights are marvelous, but it is that difficulty in grappling with one's emotions --- and the effort she expends in tackling her heart and strangling it into submission, so she can pin it to a table and dissect it in in the endless time she now has to spend alone . . . it's just devastating. It made me want to immediately go out and read everything she has ever written. There was a slight pomposity about her in-depth discussion of their privileged lifestyle, as well as a bit of name-dropping Hollywood talk, that I could've done without. But the pain she describes is quite visceral (much as she tries to apprehend it logically and intellectually, and is continually stymied in the attempt) and undeniably real. Her subject is really mankind's inability to comprehend death, and the radical adaptations required to enable oneself to go on after a devastating loss. (show less)