Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (1982)

In a lot of ways, Dillard taught me to see. She gave me tools I use every day, and hope to use for every day I have left. Her prose is full of awe and wonder and reverence. This is my favorite of all her books.
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i like dillard's long pieces best. but this was okay. it was recommended by women travel. ( )

I have liked everything I've ever read that is written by Annie Dillard. ( )

Unevenly brilliant. ( )

This is the first Annie Dillard book I've ever read, and I found it quite deserving of my time. Being a collection of short stories, it's naturally difficult to sum the book up in a review. Expeditions and Encounters is probably about as appropriate a summation as can be provided.

There are two stories in particular that have made themselves most comfortable among the familiar furniture of my mind: "An Expedition to the Pole" and "Total Eclipse". I won't attempt to sketch either of these, as any attempt short of simply copying and pasting the essays in their entirety would be inadequate. I would like to provide this one quote, however, from "Total Eclipse":

All those things for which we have no words are lost. The mind—the culture—has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world's work. With these we try to save our very lives.

Taken out of context, that passage loses a lot of significance, but it still holds some water. The book's full of stuff like that, and I very much look forward to reading Dillard's other works. ( )