It’s a book about, basically, how shitty it is to try to make the Olympics as a gymnast or figure skater and what a giant psychopath Bela Karolyi is.   Good stuff — a little …

Eh.   Too much detail in spots, not enough in others.   It’s a reissue of a twenty-year-old edition, and a certain creakiness pervades the prose; the book isn’t interesting enough to make it worthwhile …

It’s really a very good book; I just had problems with putting it down and then for some reason not wanting to pick it back up again, but I’d recommend it for a well-chosen cross …

I liked Ken Smith’s book about social hygiene film, but this one is slight, and something about the tone isn’t fun; it’s hard to explain.   (2/16/04)

Didn’t love it.   Too many digressions, too much talking about Nyack, and in spots it felt forced, especially when the author was rising above some situation or another — some of the remembrances and …

The Marilyn parts did not disappoint; a less gossipy person might have cared that the book just stopped cold being about Joe D and was just about Marilyn for fifty pages, but I didn’t mind …

It’s beautiful, and Ware’s rendering of everyday sound is amazing.   But I’m never reading it again because it’s so goddamn depressing.   (7/11/06)

You’ll get a better idea what I thought of the book (and its subject) in this here installment of the <a href=”gbcfive.shtml” mce_href=”gbcfive.shtml”>Girls’ Bike Club</a>, but here’s a sneak preview: Shut up, Jim Morrison.   …

It’s a strange little book of short pieces, but I like Mamet’s writing so much, the way he just trusts you to keep up and in turn trust him, and he just says what he …

I don’t know why I even owned this book; I think an editor sent it to me, thinking I’d like it, and it just sat on the unread pile for several years — and Lord …