Gerturde Stein is one of my favorite writers - as long as I avoid her "hard" pieces. I can only take those in very small doses. But the Autobiography of Alice Toklas and Everybody's Autobiography are wornderful - life transforming even. I read those at an impressionable age and they opened my eyes to other kinds of literature than I had previously known. I remember at the time feeling like I had leapt onto a fast moving train from a dead stop. It was breathtaking and unsettling but so exhilerating too. ( )