pretty AND smart.

I would LOVE to be paid to write essays about my life. That is my ultimate dream job. I would also love to be as deep and thought provoking as Siri Hustvedt, but hey, at least I'm funny, and I don't believe people can be both.

Living, Thinking, Looking is Hustvedt's latest essay collection. For those of you who don't know, Hustvedt is an internationally acclaimed and bestselling novelist who is super intelligent and well-respected in the literary world. Some say that readers might be challenged to keep up with her flexible, energetic mind, however they are unlikely to ever grow bored of her writing. Most of you will even feel a bit smarter after you're finished. Her collection is divided into three sections: the essays in Living draw directly from her life, where we learn a lot about her; those in Thinking explore memory, emotion, and the imagination; and those in Looking are about visual art. Her essays mix art, literature, neuropsychology and neuropsychonalisis, plus her life as a writer, daughter, sister, wife and mother.