Rating: 
Summary: Overrated
Review: I enjoyed the film and wanted to like the book, I really did. But to actually read "Henry and June" is to get inside the head of one of the most self-indulgent and pretentious writers of all time. This glorified exercise in overwrought navel gazing was so annoying I could barely get through it.
Rating: 
Summary: shockingly fabulous!
Review: I have never read a book quite like this one. After I read "Henry and June", I read "Fire" and I plan to read many more of Anais' books. This is a must read for any young woman -- Anais is not afraid of her sexuality -- this diary describes her promiscuous behavior that is traditionally only acceptable for men. It is a truly liberating book. She emphasizes the importance of experience, and living life fully in terms of sexuality, creation and emotion. She was a woman ahead of her time. I highly recommend this book -- I could not put it down -- it describes emotions and desires all women have, but try to repress because of society's rules. If anyone lived their life to it's limits, it was Anais Nin.
Rating:
Summary: shockingly fabulous!
Review: I have never read a book quite like this one. After I read "Henry and June", I read "Fire" and I plan to read many more of Anais' books. This is a must read for any young woman -- Anais is not afraid of her sexuality -- this diary describes her promiscuous behavior that is traditionally only acceptable for men. It is a truly liberating book. She emphasizes the importance of experience, and living life fully in terms of sexuality, creation and emotion. She was a woman ahead of her time. I highly recommend this book -- I could not put it down -- it describes emotions and desires all women have, but try to repress because of society's rules. If anyone lived their life to it's limits, it was Anais Nin.
Rating: 
Summary: Nin and Miller wild and untamed
Review: I read a lot of Anais Nin's fiction when I was in high school, because my girlfriend did. I didn't get it. I tried to read her famous diary, but couldn't finish even the first volume. There was an intelligent and interesting woman there, but I didn't feel I was really getting to her. The diary entries I read were too cool, too discursive for my taste.Then _Henry and June_ came out in 1986. It covered the exact same period (Paris, 1931) as "Volume I" of Nin's diaries -- first published, but in highly edited form one could now see, in 1969. Here she begins to cheat on her husband Hugo with the young Henry Miller, meets and flirts with his flighty wife June, and opens to life and eventually other men in an explosive fashion. HERE was the flesh-and-blood woman I had sensed behind the original published diaries. She panted, she sweated, she lied, she used filthy language as well as high poetry, and she adored love and sex. I thought she was a wonder. Nin and Miller collide like titans; sparks fly when they talk and when they make love. Unfortunately, I have read several of the subsequent, increasingly-appalling unexpurgated diaries, as well as the biographies by Noel Riley Fitch and Deirdre Bair. The bloom is definitely off the rose. Ms. Nin turns out to have been a consummate deceiver (though of herself as much as anyone else), an artist manque who thought herself -- wished herself -- far more talented than she turned out to be. She works better in fantasy than reality; I still might have liked to meet her in her prime, but it would have been dicey to get involved with her. It is in this book that she shows to her best as a character (never mind whether it's all true or another kind of fiction). Here one sees a woman's passion in all its riotous fire and self-contradiction. Just read this one and leave all the rest (save, perhaps for the curious erotica and a decent collection of essays entitled "In Favor of the Sensitive Man"), unless you have a penchant for the odd and pretentious.
Rating:
Summary: life changing, mind blowing
Review: I read this book when i was 25. and it changed my life. I finished all of Nin's books within 1 1/2 years,and this is still my favorite. I think every woman should read this book. With the sensual, provocative, sometimes painful self-discovery, Anais Nin created the most original artwork while creating life.
Rating:
Summary: Food for soul-searching
Review: I was only 20 when I first saw Philip Kaufman's exquisite film "Henry and June," mostly attracted by the ominous, decadent aura of Paris in the early thirties. The following year I bought the book precisely in the City of Lights without suspecting how meaningful it was to become in the near future. Following on Anaïs Nin's tack, I launched on a life-long habit of keeping a diary and I'll never forget how on the first page of that first diary I pined away at the dreariness of my life back then. As if those words had been some kind of "Open Sesame" to unsuspected forces, that proved to be the most eventful year in my life. Very much like Anaïs, I was torn between two loves: a Hugo who offered faith and security, and a Henry who supplied fireworks and imagination. And yes, there was a June, too. Looking back, I now see how Anaïs Nin's book was instrumental in making sense out of the maelstrom of ambiguity that threatened to shatter my mental balance into smithereens. It also helped me find my sea-legs in the world of womanhood, accept the different aspects that make up my whole, and respect my most human traits. This book is pertinent to anyone interested in the relationships between man and woman, woman and woman and artist with his own self, but I personally think that at one point in her life, every woman should read "Henry and June." I also highly recommend the DVD and the soundtrack.
Rating:
Summary: And I'm not even done...
Review: I was really excited about reading this book, hearing good things about it. I started to read it and couldn't put it down. I am not done with it yet, but I had to write a review before then. The desciptions Anais Nin puts into her journal are so heartfelt and real, you can't help but feel it's you. Her portrayals of the people she meets are so honest and so enlightening...the only thing I could complain about is her ranting about herself, but other than that it is a journey into a time where you wish you were around in.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Of The Stories From An Unreliable Narrator
Review: I'll say this up front--this is the best selection of all the works taken from Anais Nin's diaries and other writings. It is a marvel to consider that Nin both had the time to do everything she did--or claimed--and produce the volume of words that she did. She was moreover a much more interesting writer as a diarist than a writer of fiction. Research that her various, and occasionally vilified, biographers have done documents conclusively that much of Nin's writing was fictive. Nin herself always claimed that she was seeking a deeper truth, not historical accuracy. The debate on this subject will doubtless rage on for decades. Suffice it to say that this volume brings to life an era, and an obsessive love quadrangle (Henry-June; June-Anais; Anais-Henry; Anais-Hugo), that has something for anyone with a pulse. You don't have to like Anais Nin at all to enjoy reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Achingly passionate.
Review: Nin allows us close to her madness as well as her love. Touching
Rating:
Summary: Rewarding Read
Review: One cannot read this excerpt from Anais Nin's lifelong diaries without a measure of admiration and envy. It describes her "belle vie" in the early thirties in Paris. She has a lovely home, a loving husband, and a circle of intellectual suitors. While undertaking huge liberties and deceptions in the name of literature (she uses her writing as an excuse), she yet does so with an almost childlike need for love and acceptance. In explanation, the reader learns that she was infatuated with her father, who later abandons her. The irony of her seducing and manipulating the psychoanalyst who is also treating her husband and incestuous lover is humorous. The insights into her torrid affair with Henry Miller are fascinating. As in her fiction, she displays a knack for tasteful eroticism. She disarmingly admits to her propensity for embellishing reality. Anais Nin is narcissistic, but who could not be fascinated by a woman of such candor, talent, and complexity?--Sophie Simonet, author of ACT OF LOVE, romantic suspense (Fictionwise)
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