First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process

This book -- it's incredible. Richardson distills Emerson's wisdom, both gleaned and hard-earned, into this bouillon cube of observations about reading and writing. Richardson wooed Annie Dillard with his writing and now me too. Just incredible.

It was nice to break away from fiction for a bit and pick up something different. I thought maybe giving this book a try would relate to my writing classes I'm taking this semester. While not 100% as helpful as I would have liked, I did enjoy what Richardson was trying to get across. The cool thing about this book is that you learn almost as much about Ralph Waldo Emerson as you do the writing process. It's kind of amazing actually. When Richardson talks about how Emerson related nature to writing, I could totally understand where Emerson got his inspiration. It was nice to get writing advice that was a little different than I'm used to.

It's hard to rate this book because my grading scale doesn't really have the same standards that show more non-fictions has...so I'm just going to say that this was a great learning experience and I would highly recommend this book to any writers out there who enjoy Emerson, nature and learning about different writing processes.

*I received this book free from the publisher through www.netgalley.com. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. show less

"He generally took more books out of the library than he was able to read before they were due back. His charging records at the Boston Athenaeum, the Harvard College Library, and the Boston Society Library are not so much a measure of his intake as of his appetite. He glanced at thousands of books. He read carefully many hundreds that caught his attention. He returned over and over to a favourite few..."

I'm not an Emerson scholar, but I wholly enjoyed dabbling in this slim, bookish volume.