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Reviews

Jill

Of things I love:

The Rolling Stones (favorite song: Paint it Black).

Zadie Smith, as reviewed by Frank Rich. Awesome. The Voice has an interview. (I’m obsessed with White Teeth, and I can’t wait to read On Beauty… another thing to do after I graduate law school).

Female Chauvinist Pigs: A book I want to read.

Rushdie’s latest gets mixed reviews (but hot damn I love Michi Kakutani). I’m in the middle of The Satanic Verses right now, and it’s inspiring me to re-read Midnight’s Children.

My favorite writer Tom Robbins lands at #15 this week on the NYT non-fiction list, and is featured inside the list in today’s paper. I have not yet bought Wild Ducks Flying Backward, because I am poor, and because I have no time to read. If you’re looking for a good Robbins book to pick up, my favorite is Skinny Legs and All, but there are a great many other fabulous ones: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume, etc. His style is engaging, funny and borderline insane. For example, Robbins on Debra Winger: “She’s walked a tightrope between fire and honey, between sulfur and roses, between sarcasm and succor, between monolith and disco ball.” Beautiful.

Anyone else read anything good lately?

6 thoughts on Reviews

  1. I think I was too young when I read The Satanic Verses, right after it came out in paperback. I didn’t understand what the big jihady deal was. A few years later, an Iranian-American friend who was obsessed with Rushdie explained it for me, and I’ve been meaning to get back to it since.

  2. I just read Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich. It was sobering in a totally different way than Nickel and Dimed was, but sobering nonetheless. The books make a great one-two punch.

  3. I don’t remember where I heard it but I heard that Tom Robbins, while a great writer, desperately needs a good editor for his manuscripts. I don’t mean as in right now but in general. Apparently the manuscripts he turns in to the publisher are typically half again as large as the finished and published book. So a 1200 page work will be edited down to 800 pages. I don’t know if it’s true so I’m probably spreading malicious rumor.

  4. I just finished Fluke and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore, both of which were funny and remind me a bit of Tom Robbins. Apparently because I decided I was too happy, I’m now reading Laurie Garrett‘s Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. It’s well written, well researched, and informative; if a bit depressing.

  5. I bought an old hardback of the Edie Sedgwick biography … tawdry and shocking. George Plimpton had a hand in it, so he threads together New England Old Money with the Factory.

    Whatever movie they make about Edie will suck.

  6. “Female Chauvinist Pigs” is awesome, very provocative food-for-thought for “sex positive” feminists. Don’t listen to the feminist bashing reviews, it’s a very thoughtful and timely book.

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