Customer Comments

I love the title of this, so when I read that it's supposed to be hysterically funny, I went for it. I should have gone somewhere else. I haven't any doubt that the author is moved and bewitched and entranced by Paris, but he didn't communicate that to me in any way except to tell me so from time to time, like if he were telling me he had a headache or he was out of milk. I found so many of his metaphors self-conscious and cringe worthy, and I guess all the tales of vanity, provincialism and stupidity were designed to knock the fairy dust out of the eyes of people who want to go to Paris to dance with Gene Kelly while waiting for the paint to dry. I think it was supposed to be profound (OK, that part's funny.)This is an author who acts like the most mundane conclusions are some fascinating insights that he is the first to uncover. Really, who has to be told that an ad agency is a cesspit? Getting idioms wrong is really old hat when going for a laugh; I prefer Ricky Ricardo ("the cast is dead"). I just don't see what all the fuss and enthusiasm are about.

This didn't feel like a sequel to me at all, as far as I was concerned, this hadn't anything to do with To Kill a Mockingbird, except that the quality of writing wasn't as strong and compelling. What really struck me about this book -- for me the racism and hypocrisy are a very old, very real story that hasn't improved all that much during my lifetime, which feels even longer than it is at this stage of the game -- is what people do so they can be part of the "tribe," how they sell themselves out, let injustice reign, how cowardly people are, just to be accepted. They never consider the kind of people from whom they want acceptance. I was also struck by how many of the phrases in this book could have been uttered today by people opposed to gay rights in general and gay marriage in particular. Seems the mechanics of willful ignorance, stupidity and a mean spirit never change, just the spark for it -- skin color, gender, sexual orientation, painting your house lavender...anyway, I didn't take to my bed crying because Atticus is a racist in this, and I remain unconvinced that a child with Scout's sensitivity and perception would grow into the woman portrayed in this book. This is a curio, and leave it at that. Harper Lee, like Margaret Mitchell and Margaret Walker, had one great novel in her, and for that, we should all be grateful.

The two ARMS concerts at Madison Square Garden in 1983 were two highlights of my life for so many reasons, one of which is that the second show was the last show of this incredible mini-tour and Glyn Johns was brought out to take a bow, and I finally got a chance to applaud a man whose work I loved and whose "way" I had admired for years. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves great music and the people who make it, and who enjoys spending time, if you will, with someone of wit, intelligence and a marvelous aversion to BS. Glyn doesn't go into any great detail about things that you'd really wish he'd go into detail about, this is more like a skate through his life than any kind of formidable journey; there are people who are going to be annoyed that he spends less time talking about the Stones so he can spend time talking about Steve Miller, for example, but it's Glyn's book and his story, so to coin a unique and highbrow phrase, if you don't like it, you can lump it. But having said that, he wusses out of addressing a number of things, such as the controversy about how he believed Zeppelin ripped him off after working on their first album -- in fact, I don't think he and Jimmy Page made amends until rehearsals for the ARMS concerts. And the chapter on the Small Faces and Faces is a joke -- Johns has said that he considered Steve Marriott to be the most objectionable little p***k he's ever been in a room with, but you wouldn't know it by this book. And he's called Stewart out, and to my Faces-loving, egomaniac-despising heart's delight, on more than one occasion, but you won't find that in here. And his work with Band of Horses elicits one bland paragraph that's almost written as if he's being forced to write something by his parents. His personal life is all but absent here, and while I don't want to pry, it seems strange that his two wives barely rate a mention and that his two kids' births are marked, but he doesn't tell us anything about them except for when Ethan is grown and becomes a musician and producer like his father. And the way he avoids talking about his brother Andy, a great engineer/producer in his own right, who passed a few years ago after years of battling substance abuse of one kind or another, left me very unsettled -- I really couldn't tell if it was out of pain or shame. And I have to say this -- this book has a horrible cover, I used to see better efforts than this on bootleg VHS tapes at record conventions. But if you don't know about Glyn Johns, you should, and if you do know of him, but not much about him, ditto.

There's a LITTLE bit of a fast shuffle going on concerning the marketing of this book. I bought and read this because I love John Cleese's work, and I'm interested in him, period, end of sentence. But I assumed, yes, I know, I know, that this book would take in a number of things, and if nothing else, the whole run of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers. Yes, that's what happens when you assume -- the book ends with the first episode of Python. I was wondering why we seemed to be running out of pages! Now I've seen interviews where Cleese said his publisher said it would be a death knell if he called this something like, My Memoirs, Part One, and Cleese wants everyone to know, NOW, that this book doesn't cover Python or Fawlty Towers, and he's terribly sorry if you were mislead. There must have been some backlash, and well-deserved, that was disingenuous at best. HOWEVER, it's not a reason to skip this book. If Cleese had never heard of dead parrots or Siberian hamsters, this is a life and a career worth reading about, and he retains a sense of humor that I, frankly, thought had lost its edge as a result of too much therapy. It's full of people whose work I love -- Graham Chapman, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Marty Feldman, and so on. So it is something completely different than you might expect, but read it anyway.

I believe we are all spiritual beings temporarily occupying (dare I say, being held captive by?)a body, and Marilynne Robinson is the embodiment of that concept brought to its highest possible level. Gilead is a life-altering book if you're paying attention at all, and with Home and now with Lila, Robinson is piecing on to that story, and creating a humble world of decency, thought, acceptance, kindness, depth, intelligence, everything that is missing from a society where people actually have to be told not to text while driving, and still do it anyway. In Home, we learn the story of a character discussed in Gilead but from only one perspective. In Lila, we learn about a character from Gilead who we really didn't know at all. Robinson shows us that each person's story is a novel to be told, even if they only make a modest appearance in someone else's story. If you've read Gilead and then Home and are wondering whether Lila is worth it, wonder no more. If you haven't read these books, what are you waiting for? And don't tell me idk!

Neil redefines stream of consciousness, but he's redefined so much in his life and career, why not? I do have to admit that sometimes, his penchant for repeating himself got on my nerves, but when you experience a person worth knowing, in person or through his or her expression, whatever that expression may be, something is going to get on your nerves. The question is: is this person worth it? Does the good far outweigh the bad? In this case, of course. This is Neil Young. What a pleasure it was for me to read a book by one of my most cherished musicians which wasn't mostly a catalogue of devastating drug addiction, didn't treat every encounter with every woman over a fifty year period as if it had the significance of the invention of the wheel, or mention the size of Mick Jagger's penis. (I'm looking at you Keith and Pete.) Let me share one quote with you: "Am I too cosmic about this? I think not, my friend. Do not doubt me in my sincerity, for it is that which has brought us to each other now." Would add ten years to my life if I could have coffee with this man.

Wow, just found out, this is Come Back To Sorrento!!!! Phew, couldn't stand the idea that one of her novels was only available as an expensive "thing," and not something to be read by readers. So a five rating for Come Back To Sorrento, but not for charging a fortune for the same book by an author who had been buried on Hart's Island in a potter's field because she had been ripped off by the "friend"charged with her final arrangements.

People will debate for hours what this book is really about, and not because it's some cryptic, obtuse, full of itself self indulgence, it's just that you can look at it in so many different ways; I hated having to put it down between reading sessions. It's a hardcover worth schlepping around, which, to my mind, is the fastest praise you can give to any book.

A truly spiritual book, and in the pure sense, not in the cheap, distorted marketing/publishing sense. This was the first book I read in 2011 (and its sequel, Home, the second) and it's strange that I should pick them up in January, because by February, all hell broke loose in my life, and how much worse it would have been without the thought this book provoked and the subsequent insight provided.

Sheila Levine is Dead And Living In New York by Gail Parent is one of the funniest books I have ever read, and one of the few books that I have reread so often that I can quote passages verbatim. I first read it during the summer I turned fourteen. I was exiled at a relative’s seashore retreat, which was supposed to be a lot of fun, but what was actually a nerve-wracking trial. My hosts weren’t the problem; I was accompanied by two relatives who were obsessed with criticizing me. If I struck out on my own, I was antisocial; if I joined in the conversation, I said too much, or not enough, or the wrong thing; if I helped myself to a glass of iced tea from the fridge, I was being presumptuous; if I asked for a glass of iced tea, I had a lot of nerve expecting people to wait on me. In response, I found the closest thing one can find to an obscure corner in a six room house occupied by fifteen people, and turned my attention to Sheila and her problems. I wonder today why Sheila struck such a chord with me; many of her experiences are those of an adult woman, and dealt with roads I had yet to travel. But I laughed and cried over every word. Upon reflection, it was Sheila’s pathos, her ability to hit a brick wall no matter which way she turned, that won me over immediately. Like, I could relate. It was around this time that I started to learn that people can come to the same conclusions through a variety of experiences that many would categorize as disparate. It also served as a primer of what not to do as a young woman growing into maturity. Sheila Levine impressed upon me the devastating pressures inflicted by society on all levels to keep women undeveloped, unthinking, unknowing and unaccomplished, in favor of one goal: to marry a man. Not the right man; just a man. And not for love, or any of those indescribable joys that make two people decide to spend the rest of their lives together. But for validation as a human being. Sheila Levine decides on her thirtieth birthday that she is going to kill herself; the book is her suicide note, which moves from her childhood conditioning, through her experiences in college and as a young woman in New York until that fateful birthday, then switches into a real-time journal where Sheila plans her suicide and subsequent burial. After having little control over her life, Sheila will have it over her death. She buys everything from her tombstone and burial plot to the lavish underwear in which she wants to be found dead. She never bought underwear like that before; as she says, until that point, her concept of good underwear was stuff that still had elastic, didn’t have holes, and wasn’t stained from her period. That is typical of Sheila; only when faced with death does she do something for herself that comes even remotely close to acknowledging her value as a human being. From square one, her one thought is to snag a man. Not in any black widow fashion, but in sheer desperation: everything she does is focused on that goal. Sex has no real pleasure for her; it is something you have to do so that he will like you. Her hopes of being swept off her feet die hard and early on; actually, how she feels about a guy is beside the point: it’s how he feels about her that really matters. Is he willing to marry her and make her a real person? This is a woman who would have hitched her wagon to a serial killer, if it meant that her mother could dance at her wedding. Despite the straitened circumstances for women during the period in which Sheila Levine is written (it was first published in 1972, and takes place chiefly during the Sixties), Sheila does have her chances to grow, to learn, to explore, to develop as a human being, but they are all wasted in her desperation to meet a man. Her college career is a joke; she has no real idea of what she’s there to study, she just shows up because, as her mother constantly reminds her, it is important to find someone while at school, because once you leave, it gets harder and harder. Her attempts at a career are unfocused and half-hearted; she puts more effort into a hilariously disastrous Halloween party designed to attract a pool of eligible men. She goes to Europe, to the theater, works in political campaigns, not out of any interest or passion, but as vehicles toward achieving that one goal. Her self-esteem is below sea level, and the only people she seems capable of attracting are gay, both men and women. We watch Sheila’s hopes and dreams dry up with every attempt to make them a reality, but along the way, Sheila’s take on her problems and encounters leave you with a stitch in your side. The irony of the book is that this is a funny, genuine, long-suffering woman with an eye for the foibles of society, who is someone you would like to know on her own merits. We see Sheila’s worth, even though she doesn’t. I wonder, in this hopeless age of “Bridezillas” and wedding cake bake-offs, if Sheila may be misinterpreted as a laugh at the expense of a woman’s desperation, rather than a heartbreakingly funny portrait of a woman bound by the chains of tradition, family oppression and gender bigotry. Perhaps Sheila can help us get back on the right track. We did it before. We can do it again.