Dave Schaafsma's Reviews > When I Was a Child I Read Books

I've read all of Robinson's fiction and am a huge fan, so when I saw this essay on audio--twenty minutes--I listened to it, and again, and again, as she is such a good writer, such a careful crafter of sentences, so thoughtful. I'll probably read the rest of it, as it is not writing that one can just breeze through.

I was attracted to this essay by the title, the same title as the book itself, because this was true for me, too, but the essay is less about herself as young reader as it is about how the subject of her work emerged out of her early reading in history and the place of the (American) West in the literary and political imagination. She was a "bookish" girl from an early age in rural Idaho, as were most of her friends, reading big dusty tomes. She says Cicero is more of an inspiration than Hemingway in her work. She invites us to find epic similes inspired by Cicero in and through her work.