This is a varied and lovely collection of reflective essays written by Ann Patchett over the years. I think one of the things I’ll take away from this is what a wonderful, warm hearted and generous person she is. She’s kind, hospitable and a loyal and true friend - in fact, at the end of reading this I want her to befriend me!!!! The stand out story in my opinion is These Precious Days when after reading Tom Hank’s short stories, she gets to meets Tom and his assistant Sooki Raphael with whom she forms an incredible friendship. Sooki’s story is written with deep love and compassion, I love it, it moves me and the author also makes me love Sooki.

It’s impossible to mention all in this eclectic collection but ‘My Year of No Shopping’ is very thought provoking about the stuff we all accumulate and I’ve made a LARGE note to myself to try to follow some of this wisdom when I’m tempted to click Buy Now! I can but try. The Worthless Servant is a very moving story about Father Charlie Strobel and the lessons the author has learned from him. In the Doghouse makes me laugh especially as Snoopy is her role model (and why not), How Knitting Saved My Life Twice is funny but then becomes serious demonstrating how it helps overcome her grief at the loss of a dear friend. Tavia is one of Ann’s best friends and her lifeline and she’s just my kind of friend as she remembers half while Ann remembers the other half! The definition of a perfect friend! It’s clear that friendship is so valuable to AP and once a friend it seems you are a friend for life. Her open house policy with frequent visitors tells you all you need to know about her generous spirit. The stories include a focus on her family and it’s dynamics and she is very frank about some life decisions she has made.

Overall , this is an extremely readable collection about family, friends, love and what really matters. Her passion for all things bookish shines through and if I’m ever in Nashville her bookshop Parnassus is a must visit. What I’ll take away from this is a feeling of warmth that emanates from the author and how she is prepared to stand up for what she thinks is right. Highly recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Bloomsbury Publishing PLC for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

Interesting and varied,with just the right amount of humour and warmth.
Perfect for picking up ,and reading just one story.

I'm a longtime fan of Ann Patchett, both her fiction (Commonwealth and The Dutch House being my favourites) and non-fiction (Truth and Beauty and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage were both excellent), and am pleased to say this new collection did not disappoint.

I will caveat that statement by saying it did take me a few essays to get into the swing of this collection - perhaps some of the earlier essays in the book were a tiny bit slight? - but once I was about 25% in I found the book hard to put down. The titular essay on her friendship with Tom Hanks's assistant was brilliant (and was published in Harper's Magazine in January this year if you fancy checking it out) and worth the price of entry alone, but there were plenty of others I enjoyed, with the ones on Patchett's three fathers and the one on her husband's flying immediately springing to mind as among the more memorable ones.

Highly recommended!

Ann Patchett is a wonderful novelist who gave us Commonwealth, The Dutch House and Bel Canto amongst others. Her metier is not, for this reader anyway, a great essayist like Zadie Smith or Janet Malcolm. These pieces, many published before, have charm and make one like AP hugely as a person. They do not, however, stick in the mind. I really look forward to her next novel and thank NG for letting me read an advance copy.

I have read all Ann Patchett’s novels and would consider myself quite a fan of her writing and reasonably informed about her life from interviews she’s given around her novels’ publication. I’ve never read any of her several memoirs, though, and had little idea what to expect. Many of these pieces are articles she wrote for newspapers and magazines as diverse as ‘Knitting Yarns’, ‘Lonely Planet’, ‘New York Times’, ‘Harpers Magazine’ and the subjects are just as varied. She comes across as an astonishingly open person - astonishing to a northern Scot like me, but to an American she maybe just seems very ‘southern’. She writes thoughtfully about her own life and work, analysing the choices she has made, her relationships with her family and friends. Friends feature large, her friendship with Sooki Raphael during the latter’s final illness forming the longest and most emotionally charged of the pieces. The ones I enjoyed most are those concerning her lifelong love of books - her own writing process, people who have steered her in her writing career, her bookshop and its mission. Sometimes I find that hearing someone whose work I admire speak about themselves makes me go off them, usually if I sense they are just a little too pleased with themselves, but there was no danger of that happening here - Ann Patchett seems a sincere, compassionate, humane woman anyone would love to call a friend. I’ll be looking out for copies of her earlier memoirs. Highly recommended.

This is my favourite thing I’ve read this year - I’m a huge fan of Ann Patchett’s fiction and I loved her first essay collection, This Is The Story of a Happy Marriage so I had high hopes for this but it exceeded them. Every single essay brought a tear to my eye, not least the titular These Precious Days. So much wisdom and humour and compassion in these stories, I could have read twice as many. Highly recommended, thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Having read and absolutely loved every word of Ann Patchett’s fiction writing I was thrilled to be offered this collection of essays to review. I wans’t disappointed! To have an insight into the mind and every day life of such a very fine writer felt like a real privilege and every essay was entertaining and informative. The subject range is huge and even the most intimate and difficult are covered with compassion and a deeply human understanding. This is certainly a book I will be buying for friends and giving as a gift.

I love Ann Patchett's novels so I was thrilled to be able to read her essay collection and it does not disappoint. Her musings and observations about her life as a writer and as a woman are interesting and insightful.

Thanks to an early proof by Bloomsbury I was able to read Ann Patchett’s upcoming collection of essays titled “These Precious Days”, out in November. I enjoyed “Commonwealth” so very much but I loved this deeply personal multi-facetted book of essays even more. Patchett’s literary memoir really got under my skin, whether she is talking about her “Three Fathers” and how the women in her family like to marry more than once, her marriage to her husband Karl who is a medical doctor and a pilot or “Sisters”. As someone who worked in publishing most of her life, I loved her essays about her writing career and literary life, her bookshop Parnassus in Nashville where she lives, her publishers, her essay “Covers” rang so true or “Reading Kate DiCamillo”. “There are no children here” explains why she has remained childless.
But my favorite essay is the one about her unexpected and deep friendship with Sooki which tore me up the most. “These Precious Days” and “A Day at the Beach” are a manifestation of friendship, love and generosity written with such honesty and raw emotion; I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes more than once. But there are also much lighter essays, like “The First Thanksgiving” or “My Year of No Shopping” which portraits her spunk and wit.
Go get a copy once the book comes out, highly recommend “These Precious Days” with my whole heart, she is a terrific and understandably much beloved author with that incomparable Southern warmth and openness.

Ann Patchett is one of the finest novelists of the last 25 years with global success. Unlike many in the US her essays, articles and musings in various publications are not so recognised or read in other countries.; so this was my first time reading her non-fiction writing. This is a beautiful and moving collection of work. Ranging from short essays ( My Year of No Shopping or Cover Stories -how to select a good book cover ) to more poignant articles about family , friends and her own personal life ( There Are No Children Here , Three Fathers and These Previous Days) This is intelligent writing that is considered , measured and brings together a fine balance between human emotions and the pragmatism of the world around us. I read the book from start to finish but you could as easily dip into pieces as you wished. Compiled over the last year of the Covid pandemic, with sections touching on the impact of the virus, this is an excellent compendium putting the spotlight on the talents of an incredible writer and observer of life.

I first discovered Ann Patchett when I picked up a copy of The Dutch House in January 2020. I knew within a few minutes that, although the year was young, this was going to be one of my favourite books of 2020. Of course I had no idea what 2020 had in store and just quite how many books I was going to read (I’m always an avid reader but during the various lockdowns I read like someone possessed). However, as I predicted, I finished 2020 with The Dutch House still at the top of my list. So when I saw that Bloomsbury Publishing and Netgalley were offering the chance to read These Precious Days, a new collection of essays by Ann Patchett, I leapt at the opportunity. I was fascinated to learn more about this talented author who created such realistic characters and relationships in her writing.

These Precious Days is a wonderful, insightful collection of essays (some previously published in a different form in other publications) that allow the reader to build up a real connection with Patchett. Thanks to her openness, the reader is able to learn more about Patchett’s life: her complicated family, her travels and her relationships. I thought her essays about Sooki were particularly beautiful, and a true tribute to love and the importance of female friendship. Patchett is able to describe her friends and loved ones so that they seem real to us, the readers, and we become as invested in their lives and relationships as the author herself. Even when discussing sad or sensitive topics, Patchett’s enjoyment of life shines through on every page; after losing her father, she only wishes that she could reassure him that ‘there is joy in the place that you left’.

There were so many sections of this book that I highlighted, delighted to have found someone who could express my own thoughts so clearly and concisely, especially about books and reading. After meeting a Hare Krishna evangelist at the airport, Patchett realises that his fervour for God is echoed by her own passion for books: ‘I would stand in an airport to tell people about how much I love books, reading them, writing them, making sure other people felt comfortable reading and writing them.’ Although I’ve never written a book, the rest of this sentence holds true for myself as I’m sure it will do for many other readers around the world.

Essays can be risky, revealing elements of a favourite author that are perhaps less appealing than their fiction. The opposite, however, is true with Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days. This is a marvellous, life-affirming book and one that I’m sure I’ll return to many times over the years. Whether you’re already a confirmed fan of Ann Patchett or simply a book lover, I couldn’t recommend this book more highly.