Wind, Sand and Stars

What Hacker News says

1. eatonphilSep 2022
   The books that (I think) made the biggest impact on my writing are Zinsser's On Writing Well, everything Hemingway (e.g. The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Wind, Sand and Stars, and Beryl Markham's West with the Night.

   The common theme being simplicity and informal, but correct, speech.

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2. klelattiSep 2022
   Wind, Sand and Stars just may be my 'Desert Island Book'. Probably not as well known in the English speaking world as it deserves to be.
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3. eatonphilJun 2022
   Write consistently and spend time rereading what you write before/after you publish. Read out loud. Any time you find a confusing or unclear sentence, rework it. Get rid of unnecessary words.

   I've been doing this for 1-3 blog posts per month for the last 4 years and I think my writing is decent now.

   It didn't come naturally. I hated editing all my life until I took a course in college and realized I could actually write clearly if I just spent a little time reading and reworking what I wrote.

   The only directly related book I'd recommend is On Writing Well.

   I'd also suggest reading clear and simple authors like Hemingway (A Movable Feast), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Wind, Sand and Stars), and Beryl Markham (West with the Night).

   But fundamentally: consistent practice, rereading, and editing.

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4. myself248May 2022
   This is a splendid read. Flying 300 meters off the deck, without radio contact, detailed charts, or friends on the ground, reminds me very much of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's writing in _Wind, Sand, and Stars_.
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5. jazzyjacksonOct 2021
   There’s a wonderful passage in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry‘s memoir “Wind, Sand, and Stars” where he describes being marooned in the saharan (or is it Arabian) desert, and didn’t think much of the many small black stones speckled in the sand until night fell and he saw the steady stream of meteors falling from the sky. (If you’re in a truly dark environment, like a desert in the early days of electric light, there doesn’t even have to be a meteor shower to see a fireball every few minutes)

   The description in the book elicits a sense of one-ness, that earth is not separate from the space it inhabits, but very much interacts with all the other flying rocks.

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6. eatonphilDec 2020
   You may also enjoy a lot of Hemingway's stuff, Wind, Sand, and Stars by de Saint-Exupéry, Out of Africa by Karen Blixen and West With the Night by Berly Markham -- all memoirs (except for Hemingway's non-memoirs) very similar in style and beauty.

   If anyone else has recommendations along these lines of memoirist or novelists with excellent command of beautiful, but very simple English I'd love to hear.

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