Bird by Bird
by Anne Lamott
Published in 1995 (I finished it on May 09, 2005)
What is shocking is that she gets off to a really great start, but things go downhill soon after. Half the chapters could be lopped off and the book would probably be okay. Some parts are roaringly funny, but others parts fall flat and wait to be swept away. There's too much psychobabble, which seems like a good thing for writers, but many writers have too much head-trauma as it is. Notably, in one chapter, the author expresses contempt at how one "less talented” writer was more successful than herself. Her final solution was to avoid being friends with that person. That's helpful? We should avoid our problems and they'll just vanish? No, no, no. Perhaps that was one chapter that unfortunately escaped deletion. Jealously and bitterness need better answers than that.

So many books … (you know the rest)