Orlean, Susan: Animalish

  Amazon  

Susan Orlean's essay on her history with animals is the first Kindle Single I've read. Kindle Singles are short (between 5000 and 30,000 words), reasonably priced pieces that Amazon describes as "compelling ideas expressed at their natural length." Orlean's essay is okay, but I've enjoyed other pieces by her more: I prefer it when she turns her pen on others. She has a wonderful way of entering alien worlds--a grocery store in Jackson Heights, New York, for example, or a trailer park in Portland--and describing them as an outsider. But while Orlean's entry was just middling, after this experience I am quite taken with the Singles format. It's somehow absurdly satisfying to polish off a self-contained piece of prose (that is, not one entry in a collection of essays or short stories) in one sitting.