i could rate the book higher but it is a journal, so while you have a sense of what anais nin is experencing you really only have narrow view of the relataionship. ms. nin has great courage in exploring yourself, nothing is out of bounds ( )

"Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones." And so goes the world. Getting back to normal pleasures is a long twisted road full of pitfalls and an unfortunately arbitrary destination. Ah well! Enough pop philosophy! Anais Nin lets us inside her struggle for life, sanity and security. Frank, honest, beautifully written thoughts and actions that lead blithely to the next part, often fraught with contradictions and chaos. Come to think of it, perhaps she was more normal than abnormal. ( )

excellent book, autobioghraphy of a non prejudice woman ( )

While the writing is certainly beautiful, I was often bored with the characters and happenings. I also cannot respect Nin. She is a woman who claims to be in love with from 2 to 3 people at once, and leads on and flirts with others as well. Ultimately, I find her selfish and infuriatingly childish. Perhaps this is groundbreaking in it's frank discussions of sex, but at the same time, it was all originally just a diary. I will say that it reads more like a novel, and it was easy to forget that this is of true people. Still, I can't quite grasp why Alice Walker would call this "profoundly liberating"--because we as women talk/write about sex? because she has feelings for another women among the many men she "loves"? because she is comfortable carrying on relationships with multiple men? needless to say, I didn't find this liberating, though I did enjoy some of the moments when Nin wrote about her writing instead of her relationships and desires, and I often enjoyed the language. ( )

one of my all time favorites. combines two of my favorite writers. If you're a fan of either- it's worth reading. Sexy, relevant, thought-provoking...what more can you ask? ( )