These Precious Days: Essays

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The best one, and that's really saying a lot because they could all be considered "the best one," is the title story, "These Precious Days," in which Ann recounts her unlikely friendship with Tom Hanks's personal assistant, Sooki. Have a box of tissues handy when you read this one. It has everything in it you could want to read about. And things you didn’t know you would want to read about, or could care less about. As Ann Patchett puts emotion into her words, and writes with such honesty. About big things and small things, and all the things in between. About friendship, love, loss, family, writing, mosquitoes, spring cleaning, death, possessions, and people and places that inspired her. Patchett writes of all her different relationships .. with her three father’s, yes three… of her relationships with her mother, sister, husband, and friends. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, Patchett has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, ... Patchett's gift is to write from intensely personal territory but to make her insights - about the importance of being generous in our relationships, or the fine balance between optimism and grief - seem universally relevant. As you read these meditative but warm-hearted essays, you begin to understand what matters most - not just to Patchett, but to you

Some years all we’ve managed to do is exchange birthday cards, while other years we’ve talked on the phone every week.” My son called me earlier today and told me I must read "These Precious Days," a long essay in Harpers magazine by Ann Patchett. We both loved her essay collection "This is the Story of a Happy Marriage." So as soon as I had time today, I found the essay online and didn't come up for air until I finished. The story is this: Ann Patchett got to know Tom Hanks from his short story collection and then got to know his assistant Sooki who then ended up coming to live with Ann. It is a remarkable, wonderful essay - here is the link. Go read it now! Warning - it is quite long - so clear some time because you won't want to stop.Ann mentions Sooki’s situation to her husband, Karl, who is a doctor, and the story really begins there. It is an amazing piece of diary, memoir, essay, and colour. Lots of colour. My favorite essay in the collection is the title one, the longest in the collection by far. When Tom Hanks agrees to do the audiobook of The Dutch House, Patchett forges a connection with his assistant, Sooki, a connection that transcends schedules and logistics and blossoms into a life-changing friendship. This essay truly could’ve been a novel. I am counting down to the release of These Precious Days. I adore everything she writes but especially her essays, which are always profound and clever, and funny and wise Publishers Weekly gave These Precious Days a starred review, calling it “eloquent” and saying Patchett writes “poignantly—and often with wry humor”. [1] In The New York Times, Alex Witchel called the collection “excellent”, saying “Patchett’s heart, smarts and 40 years of craft create an economy that delivers her perfectly understated stories emotionally whole.” [4] In The Washington Post, Michele Filgate praised Patchett’s “welcoming and comforting” prose. [2]

i like the way ann patchett writes and thinks, and i like the way she depicts her friends and family and life, so this book of autobiographical essays worked for me. And then there are a group of essays that take on really profound issues: why she never wanted children (and why interviewers insist on tsk-tsking her about it), the illness and death of her father and, in the poignant title piece, the profound friendship she forged with Sooki, an artist and Tom Hanks’s assistant. I was starting to understand that what she needed might have been color rather than conversation, breath rather than words.” For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. The wonder of being a young reader. Where you imagination allows you to truly believe in what you’re reading, even though you know it isn’t true. Yet it puts the spark of magic in you, which you hopefully keep well into adulthood. Or find it again if it becomes lost.Paying close attention to the text, and realizing that books can save you, those were the lessons I learned my freshman year of college when school was closed. I then went on to use this newfound understanding to great advantage for the rest of my life. Books were not just my education and my entertainment, they were my partners. They told me what I was capable of. They let me stare a long way down the path of various possibilities so that I could make decisions." No one exists on paper and pens, alone in a room without anyone to tell them when to get up and what to eat and when to go to sleep.” That being said, who cares? The out-of-touch nature of someone living her entire life surrounded by the elites like her makes everything feel like that someone at a dinner party you wish would stop talking, especially when it comes to her loved-ones owning planes. She writes when she can, and always without a contract. “I never owe people work.” The writers she knows who are the most protective of their time are the least productive, she says. “I get the job done. I don’t procrastinate. Creativity, inspiration, all of those words that meant so much when I was 20. Now, I go to work. I show up in the morning. I’m going to get it done.” She knows she can write. “I’m not worried about if I can do this. It’s more can I have an idea that seems worth my time and worth your time. I have to think this really matters.” Patchett processes her life experiences, big and small, through writing, with this collection of essays, itself born out of such a need. She artfully connects different moments in her life to arrive at insightful realizations and makes sense of life as she goes along. Writing provides Patchett with a way to make sense of the world around her and to capture and reflect on her own experiences, as well as those of others, in a way that is both personal and universal.

All of life – friendship, love, loss, fertility, grief, gratitude, success and failure – is contained in These Precious Days If you get the opportunity, it’s definitely worth settling in with this book. I can’t recommend it enough. It truly is such a calm wonder. Hopefully it will give you a gentle nudge to think about what’s important and what truly matters most to you. And it’s timely to read it as this time of year, at the beginning of a new one. Though I’d say reading this any old time will be the right one.Illuminating, penetrating, funny and generous, These Precious Days is joyful time spent in the company of one of our greatest living authors. Published: 22 Nov 2021 These Precious Days by Ann Patchett review – radiant lessons in writing and living What I have read is the title story, a novella, really, from Patchett’s book which is expected to be published in November 2021. But the flames are not just those of a global pandemic. Lara’s eldest daughter Emily, who plans to make her life on the farm, decides she is not going to have children because of the climate emergency. It is here that even Patchett’s optimism falters. “I can’t imagine going through this with young children. You’re not worrying just for yourself and your own life and a love for trees and birds and all that. You’re worrying about it for the people you love the most.” I was a little disappointed that Patchett didn’t include her marvellous Vanity Fair cover story on Nashville resident (and fellow book lover) Reese Witherspoon, which went way beyond your typical magazine profile. But I understand why it didn’t make the cut. (You can read it here.)

If you read “The Paris Tattoo,” you will find out that Ann Patchett and her friend Marti had a transformative experience when they witness tattoo-covered young men in Londonderry, Ireland, during a war.All throughout these essays Patchett imbues her writing with a deep sense of wonder, appreciation and gratitude without ever ignoring the harsh realities of life that we face in our brief time on this earth. Witchel, Alex (19 November 2021). "Ann Patchett Has Thoughts on a Bunch of Subjects". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021 . Retrieved 14 December 2021.