The Best American Essays 2015 (The Best American Series) by Ariel Levy (PDF)

Description

“22 contributors explore a wide range of experiences” in this “illuminating, invaluable” anthology edited by the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs (Publishers Weekly). Writing an essay is like catching a wave, posits guest editor Ariel Levy. To catch a wave, you need skill and nerve, not just moving water. The writers featured in this volume are certainly full of nerve, and have crafted a wide range of pieces awash in a diversity of moods, voices, and stances. Leaving an abusive marriage, parting with a younger self, losing your sanity to Fitbit, and even saying goodbye to a beloved pair of pants are just some of the experience probed by essays that are unified in the daring of their creation. As Levy notes, Writing around an idea you think is worthwhile—an idea you suspect is an insight—requires real audacity.” The Best American Essays 2015 includes entries by Hilton Als, Roger Angell, Justin Cronin, Meghan Daum, Anthony Doerr, Margo Jefferson, David Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit and others.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a strong anthology of essays that I enjoyed overall. All the essays were short enough to be read in one sitting, which is my preferred way for reading essays. There are a few trusty big name crowd-pleasers in the mix — Malcolm Gladwell with his cogent, well-argued piece on social status and immigration; Zadie Smith’s drifting, whimsical meditation on Manhattan; David Sedaris’ self-deprecating tale of enslavement to Fitbit. My personal favorite goes to Solonit’s “Arrival Gates,” a lyrical essay penned at the Japanese shrime Fushimi Inari-taisha. I am not a stranger to Solonit’s prolific writings, many of which lyrical and travel-related, but this essay struck a particular chord with me, its peaceful reverence and acceptance had a lulling, entrancing draw, creating Solonit’s own trance, lost in the the presence of time. There are others, who despite their longstanding fame, are new voices to me — Roger Angell’s hugely entertaining essay “This Old Man” has one of the most enduring, memorable opening voice that I can recall. My only complaint, which is also voiced by other readers, is that this collection is heavy on the topic of aging and mortality. This perhaps reflect the corpus of work in 2015, with the aging of the boomer population, and the noteworthy works of writers like Hitchens and Didion circling the imminent passing of life. But as a celebration of the best essays of our time, I wished for a little optimism, a little more color and diversity

⭐I owned a copy and taught two of the essays included in this anthology to my Advanced Expository Writing class. This copy I gifted to my talented cousin, who is beginning to write her own essays.

⭐This compilation of essays is rich in diversity and styles. I generally don’t read essays one after the other, but prefer to take time to savor a really good one. That strategy is getting tested with this collection because I want to launch into another right away. I have also enjoyed the varied approaches taken by the authors in their writing. A blogger myself, I admire their polished works.

⭐I’ve been collecting and reading Best American Travel Writing since 2000 and like them so well I began adding Best American Essays to the collection about 4 years later. I look forward to each new edition every October and in recent years I have to say Essays have been consistently better overall than Travel Writing — until the 2015 edition, that is. This edition is so bad it actually mad me a little angry. I don’t know if it was just an off year for essays or, as I suspect is more likely the case, the guest editor has particularly poor judgement and taste. It’s not that the wordsmithing is bad, just that the subject matters are boring and the delivery plodding beyond endurance. I was only able to read a few from start to finish, giving up on the rest long before the authors did. Even Cheryl Strayed and David Sedaris, who can usually be counted on to hold your attention, maybe even evoke a smile or two, were weak compared to previous contributions. Really disappointing after waiting all year. Save your time and money, skip this one.

⭐Has multiple stories inside each one being unique and having a different theme. Its good if you want to read a couple of new stories/essay’s i have only read 3 out of the whole book one about a couple the second about a domestic abuse victim and the story of a disabled woman all are pretty good. cant wait to finish the book 🙂

⭐One of the better collections. No clunkers. Most or all are personal-experience essays, all of them very good–but the similarities highlight the weakness of the series, which is its partiality to the tastes and preferences of individual editors. Almost all are narrative, almost all written for a first-person perspective.As a text for personal reporting this is a good choice, and highly readable, essay by essay.

⭐I am only sorry that I came to these marvelous essays so late! I am a reader of literary fiction and memoirs almost exclusively so what a surprise it was to find such fascinating, well written essays in these collections. Who knows what one might be interested in until you start to read about it. An excellent writer can make you interested in just about anything and this is what happens in this volume and others like it.

⭐I like the Best Essays series because I end up reading things of high quality that I simply would not have found on my own. Some of the essays I have read before, but in general I enjoy re-reading those. I also like “playing the editor”, in the sense of selecting a few essays that I would have not include.

⭐The product it self is slightly simple, but is good. The language is pretty hard

⭐As good as ever…I read it every year!

⭐Disappointed. The subject and themes of the essays seemed very inappropriate and very preachy.

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