Book #108: Living Out Loud by Anna Quindlen

I bought this book at a library sale years ago, before Dane was even born, and it has sat on my bookshelves ever since then, untouched. I've culled my books numerous times, but I kept saving this one because I knew that I liked Anna Quindlen as an author and I kept meaning to read it. One of my goals for this year was to finally read some of the unread books on my shelves, and I got around to this one this week. And I definitely enjoyed it. The funny thing is that it's a collection of her syndicated newspaper column that Quindlen wrote when she was a reporter--and it's from the mid-eighties. Before I was even born. So it's definitely dated in many of its essays--she writes about Ted Bundy and AIDS and living in New York and being afraid for her life, etc. But I really enjoyed time traveling to what it was like being a young parent (she is in the same stage of life that I am now, in this book) at that time. I loved a lot of her essays on parenting and her reminiscences on her childhood, and how honest she was and how good at exposing herself without exposing too much. She talked about her mother dying when she was young, and how that affected her, and her fears as a parent. The one essay that I loved the most was about how vulnerable she feels because of the power she has over her children, how the two parents are the ones who have the power to make them happy or sad, and how she doesn't want to have that power and that responsibility, and how scary that is. It's something that I think about too, and which resonates with me. I thoroughly enjoyed this book--it was an easy read of short essays (since they were originally newspaper columns) and she is an excellent writer. I'd love to read more of her works.