Joan Didion
Joan Didion (1934-2021) was an American cultural commentator, memoirist and aessayist. Her books have been recommended many times on Five Books.
Books by Joan Didion
“By building up a picture, snippet by snippet, observation by observation, she captures a sense of America’s instability and its differences. What’s really interesting about Didion is the way she lets people speak for themselves. I think when you go somewhere you want to write about, you have to go in with no preconceptions. It’s tempting to go around casting judgement on things, but what Didion does is, she’s just a pair of eyes through which we see these different places. There’s a wonderful subtlety to how she captures place. There’s a haunting, Gothic sense through which she sees everything, but it’s never editorialised.” Read more...
“When Hillary was the young wife of the Governor of Arkansas, she would read books together and talk about them with her best friend, Diane Blair, a professor at the University of Arkansas. She and Diane read that book, loved it, and talked a lot about it…The book has a bleak aspect to it, in terms of marital relations.” Read more...
The best books on Hillary Clinton
David Maraniss, Biographer
“This is a collection of essays by Didion, based in California and covering the second half of the sixties. I like Didion for her writing style and her control over her material, but also for the way in which she captures a historical moment. In this book she really conveys the sense of significant cultural change that America was undergoing at that time. If you’re writing about China or Egypt right now, you’re also aware of this feeling. These are times that have a certain weight, a significance, that isn’t common. As a writer you want to understand this moment and capture its resonance…There’s a mesmeric quality to her writing. She uses a lot of short sentences; there’s a strong sense of rhythm.” Read more...
Peter Hessler, Journalist
“I feel Joan Didion is the patron saint of a maelstrom of culture and environment of a particular time. She is the great American road-trip writer, to my mind. She has that great widescreen filmic quality to her work.” Read more...
The Best Books of Landscape Writing
Dan Richards, Travel Writer
Interviews where books by Joan Didion were recommended
The Best Books of Landscape Writing, recommended by Dan Richards
Good writing offers readers an invitation to explore and engage with the world around them, says Dan Richards—author of Outpost and Climbing Days—as he recommends five brilliant books that exemplify the skill of landscape writing.
The best books on Worry, recommended by Steven Amsterdam
The author tells us about books that have anxiety at their heart, ranging from obsessional love and chronic neurosis to conspiracy theory paranoia and existential angst
The Best Narrative Nonfiction, recommended by Peter Hessler
Writer and journalist Peter Hessler selects five books, from Haight Ashbury to a fifth grade classroom, which show how nonfiction can bring true stories to life through literary techniques. He chooses the best of narrative nonfiction.
The best books on Hillary Clinton, recommended by David Maraniss
As America votes in a new president, veteran political journalist and author, David Maraniss, recommends the best books to read to get a better understanding of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The best books on Sense of Place, recommended by Patrick Galbraith
Novelists, non-fiction writers and poets all attempt to create immersive and atmospheric settings in their books—what is called a ‘sense of place’ in literary terms. Here, the British journalist Patrick Galbraith selects five books that explore and evoke a sense of place—including works by Joan Didion, Mark Kurlansky and John McPhee.
The best books on Grief recommended by Sophie Ratcliffe