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The Same River Twice?

Sara Woods

On reading...and re-reading


Scanning my bookshelves for a paperback I could cram into my backpack last-minute before a trip to Florida last month, I grabbed Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a book I’d read in grad school at the peak of my essay-obsession. I didn’t start studying nonfiction, much less essays or Didion, until grad school, after I changed my concentration from literature to rhetoric and composition. As the Queen of the Essay, Didion was worth not only study but imitation.


The most common way I’ve seen Didion described in print is as a “keen observer,” or that’s the phrase my brain latched on to, and it’s an apt one. (What writer isn't a "keen observer"?) Beyond that, she seemed to have an ironclad memory. Of course, she also wrote that entire essay about the importance of keeping a notebook, so maybe that’s what I’ve been missing. Slouching Towards Bethlehem is excellent, but it didn’t hold my attention well enough this time around. I found myself dozing off on the plane, the book almost slipping from my hands. Come to think of it: maybe I should have grabbed The White Album instead. I seem to remember enjoying that one quite a bit.


While in Florida, a little disappointed in Didion and looking for a good book to read poolside, I bought a copy of Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders at a Barnes & Noble where everything seemed to be on sale and the cashier was so busy reading that she barely looked up when I approached the counter. Usually, on vacation, I’d grab a novel for entertainment—some sort of literary fiction. But with my recent rehashing of Didion, I figured trying out another essay collection couldn’t hurt. When I opened World of Wonders to find that the first chapter/essay is named after one of my favorite trees, the catalpa, I knew I’d made the right choice. It helped that the book has beautiful illustrations, too.

World of Wonders is part illustrated nature journal, part memoir, part essay; each chapter/essay is named for a plant or animal that Nezhukumatathil uses to frame discussion of a larger theme or idea. I took the book with me to the pool each afternoon and had finished reading it by the time we landed in Kentucky a few days later.


It’s a real joy to read a book at the right time. If I had read World of Wonders when I first learned about it in 2020, I don’t think I would have fully appreciated it; I didn’t even know how to identify catalpa trees. But now, when my husband and I go on bike rides near our house, we often stop to marvel at a massive catalpa, planted right at the entrance of one of the oldest schools in town. Zack’s hobby is woodworking, and he’s been teaching me the names of trees and which are best to build with; which, like Osage Orange, are so concrete-hard that they wear through saw blades quicker than a commercial mill can replace them. He tells me that sycamores usually grow near water, and he points out the invasive hackberryovertaking a fence near our neighborhood. The world around us is so fascinating, if we care to look, a fact that World of Wonders really hammers home. It’s a little treasure of a book—one I can see myself returning to.

When we got home after vacation, perhaps feeling a little guilty at having bought yet another book—I am trying to curb my book-buying habit—I decided to visit the library instead, picking up two Emily St. John Mandel novels and a copy of Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days, another essay collection.


As a very successful author and independent bookstore owner, Patchett is highly revered in the book-world. When I was still a book festival director, every time Patchett published a new book, I carefully typed (or even hand-wrote) an invitation for her to be the keynote speaker. When her novel Commonwealth was published, she even accepted, but I don’t remember getting to meet her. For her greenroom, however, I distinctly remember furnishing Triscuits. What other food did I set out to complement the Triscuits? I couldn’t tell you. But I do know that now, though she doesn’t remember my first name, she might still recognize me by the moniker “Triscuit Girl,” which I find delightful.

I consumed These Precious Days as quickly as I would a novel, returning it to the library and subsequently buying a paperback copy anyway. (I needed to be able to re-read it or possibly loan it to my mom at some point.) I’m finding it hard to put into words what I like so much about this book. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s so personal; so much about people that the author cares about directly rather than events or cultural analysis. If you are at all interested in writing about friends or family or mortality or art or even books with empathy and understanding and humor and great care, use this book as a great example of how to do so. It’s what Didion, as keen observer, did. It’s what I hope to be able to do in the future, with any luck and a great deal of work.

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