12 Comments

I remember being so surprised to find her cider book, but I read it cover to cover. I really like her voice in both fiction and nonfiction.

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Yeah it's really a good and useful book about cider!

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I still use her original cider book as a reference when making hard cider every year!

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This was such an inspiring and well-researched post. Loved finding out that Proulx’s writing style is just as distinctive in her gardening /homesteading books!

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I love your classes on Substack!

And yes, just thinking about how many people would have been fans and appeared on Substack had they been active right now... the mind boggles.

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What a find this essay is for me! Thank you for the bibliography and excerpts from Proulx's earlier days. Her voice, if not her prose, is remarkably consistent, isn't it?

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Oh what a delightful discovery! I had no idea. And this made me laugh hard in a couple spots, including that she'd be doling out her back-to-nature homesteading advice here on Substack. Gosh, such great advice writing, dontcha know I'd subscribe.

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And I can't help note that I first found your nonfiction work so darn compelling that I was willing to trust you with fiction and that worked out mighty fine. Amy Stewart and Annie Proulx have this in common in my library.

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Wow, the homesteading descriptions of making cider and the deliciousness of varieties of lettuce link up well with her practical theme of knots for chapters in Shipping News. And just her writing is beautiful in both nonfiction and fiction. Part of that is her appreciation of what is good.

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Like lettuce, cedar waxwings, etc.

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I love this - thank you!

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I loved this, thank you. Her voice in those early books is wonderful. What a writer!

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