Rating: 
Summary: Ah, Humanity.
Review: First off, this book is all together too much lumped in with Thoreau's "Walden". I think the connection is that the authors both lived in the all-encompassing "Great Outdoors", and both liked to reflect on things. A lot. And then tell me about it. There are, however, striking differences in the two novels.
For one, I got the distinct feeling while reading "Walden" that he felt he was doing me a great favor in giving me a very detailed list on all the ways he was better then me, while Dillard seems to truly enjoy and love her life and feels indifferent whether you read about it or not.
Secondly, "Walden" is bad. I know that seems a bit crude, but really, this is necessary to say. Read this when you've lived life a little so you can feel guilty about the stuff you didn't do. Always good to reflect.
Anyway, on to the reason I'm writing this, as a review for "Pilrgim at Tinker Creek".
I went into this book negative. I was attacking it with an angry face and was fully prepared to complain a lot to anyone who wanted to listen and throw things. So, in knowing that, and in me telling you now I am a stubborn person, a rating of 4 should really kind of show you something.
Dillard has an amazing ability to make you care about something you thought you didn't care about. She does this through a high-class style of trickery. She tells you these neat little anecdotes that you'll tell your friends later, mixes in some idealism, and then bam(BAM!), you're reading about algae for 7 pages and don't even realize it until it's all over.
Normally, when authors pull this type of strategy, that's what they stick to, because, heck, fooling the masses is fun. But she doesn't stop there. She also is a storyteller. Let me expand on that a bit -- she shows she is human; sharing experiences, her feelings, her downfalls. The effect of this coupled with her philosophical nature equals something that can grab your attention because it is her. It is her saying, "This is me, take it or leave it."
Don't mind me getting a bit pensive over here, but it is a beautiful thing.
Of course, this could all be because I am holding "Walden" as the measuring stick.
Hmmmm....
Perhaps I'll let you worry about that one.
Rating: 
Summary: A Literary Adventure -- A Spiritual Pilgrimage
Review: I loved it. I've searched and searched for somethign deepfully insightful to say about Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; yet all I can think is, I love it. As the title conveys this book is a pilgrimage, a journey, a quest. Like a modern version of Thoreau's Walden, PATC is a reflection upon a time spent in solitude around a body of water. Thoreau chose a pond, Dillard a Creek. The two bodies of water seem to spark the same philosophical charges and divine inspirations. However, Dillard's insightful journey is much more captivating to modern day readers. This book is a beautiful tapestry woven of figurative language, dynamic diction, beautiful imagery. Dillard has a flare for description. While reading, one can really see what she sees. In one chapter she describes night as "an eyeless mask" covering her face. This "tapestry" is a mosaic of many colors. On one page Dillard's sensory images will have you on the verge of tears. The next page might have you dashing to the toilet with grousome scientic details. But of course, then she will make you laugh with her charming humor. On a more serious note, this book is also a religous journey. While she writes of giant water bugs, floods and flowers; it is evident that there is spiritual depth to her nautral adventure. In writing this book, Annie Dillard "finds" herself. Anyone who is searching for his or herself, or perhaps just searching for a missing something in his or her life should read this book! Or for a person who is not searching for anything - this book is reviving, it will cleanse you. If nothing else, you will be impressed by her writing. She employs counless literary techiniques- my favorite being telegraphic sentences. She uses these often as she comes to a close in chapters and feels the need to create a "whole-circle" effect. "So." She says always as she prepares to summarize. These telgraphic sentences are like taking a deep breath. They give the reader a break from laborious sentences and they have a stonger impact on the reader's memory. It's memorable. It's fascinating. It's cleansing. It's divine. It's well- written. I loved it. Go read it!
Rating:
Summary: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: A Great Read
Review: Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek offers a pleasurable reading. The book is filled with numerous details of the complex insect world, biblical allusions, and random facts that Dillard has picked up throughout her life. By the conclusion of the book, it is very clear that Dillard is well-read and always yearning to gain knowledge of any kind. Dillard often uses anecdotes to present her encounters with insects, plants, and nature in general. Telegraphic sentences often appear at the end of paragraphs, humorously concluding stories that Dillard tells. Dillard is not afraid to ask the questions that challenge her beliefs, and finds that she must come to terms with her personal beliefs to be at peace. Analogies, metaphors, and an always-changing tone add texture to a book that would otherwise be bland. Dillard's greatest skill is her ability to come full circle at the end of chapters, tying up loose ends and beginning and ending the chapters with similar thoughts. As I mature into a young adult, this book brings back the childhood memories of myself in nature, one on one. I was reminded of the innocence and the simplicity of being a child discovering nature's work. I read this book following Henry David Thoreau's Walden for an AP English class. Hearing that Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is similar to Walden, I was initially terrified of this book. Walden left me bewildered, screaming in the wee hours of the night for help. Dillard's diction is simple, understandable, and the story has a point. Don't twist the two! Dillard's book has many philosophical messages and will leave you happily wandering in the woods for obscure insects. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Sweet Home - Tinker Creek???????
Review: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a great read! Dillard's writings are almost a rubric on how to appreciate nature. Considering I live in a wooded area, it was easier for me to relate to many of the things she has observed in nature. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was like going home for me. "The man's" work is the total opposite for me.
Many people compare Pilgrim at Tinker Creek to Walden. But, no. Walden is a death sentence. Thoreau was a transcendentally condensing man, who, when short on the dough, and tired of beans, went over to his mother's house for pies. Thoreau's work screams, "I have found the truth." While Dillard's work whispers, "I have found a truth." Thoreau wants to tell the reader about the world he has found. Dillard, on the other hand, wants to show the reader what she has found.
Books like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek are needed in this world. Observing nature and reading philosophy keeps the human brain juices pumping. I am glad I read this book as a young person. It speaks. It spoke to me. What I learned from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is helping me keep my world in perspective, and making it all the more interesting, everyday.
Rating:
Summary: Waldin vs. Tinker Creek
Review: I was assigned this book after a tough read in my AP English class. We had to read Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a decaf version of Walden. Annie Dillard writes in a conversational manner with short transition sentences. Usually these sentences appear at the end of one paragraph and then begin the next one. I actually could laugh when I read this book and not an uncomfortable laugh of "oh no, what in the world is she talking about?" Dillard's writing is like a wet dog. It stinks. No, just kidding. It is dripping with metaphors and simlies. She is Einstein when it comes to the full round affect. All of her chapters have a sum-up at the tail and even the last one sums all the chapters up. It is infested with allusions to the Bible, Alice in Wonderland, and even Buddha.She does not mind flexing her paws of knowledge she has from reading books about eskimos and books by insect lover, Teale. All of her stories are muddy with sensory details. So, (a short word that Dillard loves to meld into her writing), the reader sees in their mind's camera what they are reading.
Both of Thoreau and Dillard wrote these stories next to bodies of water. Not to mention they both have a weird fetish for a certain fluff of fur; for Thoreau it is woodchucks and for Dillard it is muskrats. In both the decaf and heavy stories the authors are questioning faith. Faith in God. They start out happy and joyous. Then all of a sudden, faster than it takes a turkey to cool, they do a one-eighty mood swing. Dillard turns in her chapter called "Fecundity". In this chapter, she descibes parsites.If you can stomach it, you will be interested in what she says we should do with teddy-bears and baby bibs.
No matter how out in the middle of nowhere they lose themselves. In the end they find themselves and a renewed passion for God.It is like sampling the first clean, crisp tastes of water from a spring after a long jog to get there. It is a journey you will never forget, and many other will try it as well but will not make it. Now, though, you are refreshed and have a zest that they lack. Like it or not, stealing some thunder from Mary Oliver, even after you read one page out of Dillard's book,like slicing a chapter out of her brain, you will never be able to look at the world the same again. I recommend that if you do like this book, continue on your quest for unquenchable knowledge about rodents,creative thoughts inspired around bodies of water, and beautiful writing. Read the cappacino of these environment based books, Mary Oliver's Blue Pastures.
Rating: 
Summary: smack dab in the middle
Review: This book was a one of a kind. Dillard's unique style kept my attention throughout the entire book. I especially liked the way that she left no loose ends and tied everything in the book together. The only reason that the book did not receive a higher rating from me was that it often gave way too much information and ventured far beyond boundaries of pointlessness. Overall, this was an intertaining book and well worth the time to read.
Rating:
Summary: Not Another Snoozer
Review: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek. With a name like that, I didn't have to even read a page to know that this book was going to put me to sleep. However, as much as I hate to admit it, I was wrong. Pilgrim At Tinker Creek is one of the most inspiring and fascinating books I have ever read! I am amazed at the intricacy in nature that Dillard sees as well as the rhetorical tecniques she uses to describe it. She displays a fantastic use of personal anecdotes, parallel structure and even good ol' humor. The humor added just enough fun to the information to hold the reader's attention. I am proud to say that Annie Dillard has written a book that will keep any reader wide-eyed and awake!
Rating:
Summary: freaking excellent power of observation
Review: this is a book written by a person completely open to the world around them--taking everything in--revelling in every detail of the precious life about us--truly >>living in the moment<<--Anne Dillard captures the ebb and flow of life, and also manages to hit upon some of the deeper philosophical mysteries of life--just by talking about the flora and fauna in her back yard--in this age where many of the religious traditions and mythologies of humankind are losing their relevance to modern culture--human beings are searching for a new framework of meaning and significance--Anne Dillard tells us that it is right under our noses for us to see--the only thing that prevented it from getting five stars is that it can sometimes lose itself in the glorious details--meaning this isn't a "book I couldn't put down"--but it is a good book to read before bedtime and reflect on
Rating:
Summary: If I could write like this, my life would be complete....
Review: Back in '95, as a senior in high school, I read for class an essay by Dillard that so enthralled me I rushed to the library to see if I could find anything else she'd written. The "essay" turned out to be a chapter from PaTK - "Seeing." Find it. Read it. See it. This is not a book to be rushed through, not one to read if you're looking for a nice plot-driven novel. Yet I return to it again and again - this is one work that I am never tired of, no matter how many times I've read it. And it should be digested slowly, in small pieces - reading it is almost a meditation in itself. At a time in my life when I'd just about decided that the world was mostly mundane and boring, it restored my faith in the wonder and magic of the world as it is, reminded me that there is much to be discovered, much to be celebrated. I think it's perhaps unfortunate that this has been used as required reading in schools - forcing kids to barrel through it for a deadline seems destined to turn them off to it, make them decide it's not worth much, as evidenced by the many, many (also required of them) reviews written here by students. When you've got to read it by Monday, what time do you have to stop and appreciate the beauty of a sentence, a paragraph, a thought of Dillard's? And that is where the work's chief beauty is found. She uses words as notes in a symphony. Lyrical. Tragic and triumphant. Not to be missed, if you're willing to take the time to do it right. This is not a book to be read and conquered. Take it slowly. It will work on you in unexpected ways. Once I even saw the tree with the lights on it. Wow, now I want to pick it up and read again. There's nothing like it. I promise.
Rating:
Summary: The Microcosmic Eye
Review: Reading some of the one-star reviews of "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" reminds me, in 74-point block type, of the depravity of human nature. That there are souls so sluggish, so wickedly oblivious to the sacraments of natural revelation, strikes me as an unfathomable abomination. But I digress... "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" is a guidebook to seeing things. Not merely looking at them, but really seeing them. This is a thing essential, foolish as it may seem, to living richly--living the Good Life--living a sacramental life. Dillard has a keen eye for the mysteries God has woven into the fabric of the universe, and an earnest (if clumsy), groping lust to search out their meaning. Along the way she discovers what Chesterton asserted almost a century ago, that "we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." He is still playing games with the cosmos, and his games, more terrible than the sternest of our sobrieties, lie barely hidden beneath an amiable film of ordinariness--threatening at any moment to gush out at us like a bursting dam and drown us in an inexhaustable flood of divine playfulness. "What kind of God makes such things?" Dillard asks. The answer to such a staggering question even angels desire to look into. If we would see with them, our first step must be to open our eyes. Annie Dillard's eyes are wide open.
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