An American Childhood

However, my attitude changed while reading the second part. The book stops breezing through Dillard's youth, and instead goes into depth about what interests she had, and much of this was really unneccessary and actually boring. For example, she liked to collect rocks, so she used an entire chapter to not only explain this obsession, but to elaborate on rocks themselves. Also, she uses another chapter to describe the version of the French and Indian War she made up when she was 10. A reader does not want to know these things, and would probably prefer the writing style of the first few chapters.

The third section was better than the second part, but lacked some 'meat.' She describes some of her teenage life, but merely hints at a lot of things that went on and rushed through it. Though she did do drugs and her life began to spiral downward, Dillard could have just been avoiding the facts for her own personal reasons. This section kept me more interested, but I was still waiting for that description of culture she had in the first few chapters.

I went through and scanned the epilogue and introduction chapters, simply because a lot of the information was just describing how her father had gone down a river every day. It could have effected Dillard's life greatly, but none of that effect is described in the book; thus, the reader reads long, boring chapters about a man going down a river. This lost my interesting, therefore, I scanned the chapters rather than reading them.