A Hitchcock short-story compilation (remember when he had his brand on everything — books, TV shows, everything?).   I don’t usually read much detective/suspense fiction, but the old-school stuff is good; the diction is more …

Lovely, friendly, quick read.   Not what you might expect from Roald Dahl and all the more winning for it.   (8/10/05)

The apple chapter is brilliant, the tulip chapter is less brilliant but still entertaining, and the marijuana section — I have to doff my cap to Michael Pollan.   He’s able to write ably about …

The cross-cutting is a little heavy-handed for me, but it works better and gets more fluid as the book goes on, and the portrayal of Jane is pitch-perfect.   The woman is maddening.   So …

Brooks is a really sharp writer; he’s exact, but he doesn’t get bogged down, and he pokes fun at the Bobos, but not meanly.   His account of visiting the REI store in Seattle is …

Excellent book; I might have cut some of the historical stuff, like about Serpico, but every time Conlon went on a tangent and I was like, “Aw, get back to your experiences,” I ended up …

For a biography of one of the most enduringly controversial figures in the game, this is a real chore to get through, for two reasons: 1) too much background/historical context, that does not add to …

Usually it’s the case with true-crime books that the story is compelling, but the writing is crap.   This one’s the other way around — a well-written book that is nonetheless some of the least …

Aw.   So cute, and so funny!   Coco is my favorite, with her teeeeeeny little tiara.   (3/29/04)

Mary Wells Lawrence is so full of herself that it’s a wonder she hasn’t exploded, and the prose is the kind of forced-dizzy hostessy gushing I ordinarily hate, but it works — it’s a fast, …