No Frigate

Louis Brandeis

Although I'm a lawyer, I haven't read that many biographies of Supreme Court justices.  In fact, I think the only one I've read is Thurgood Marshall's.  So I'm surprised that I've repeatedly read reviews of the new Louis Brandeis biography by Melvin Urofsky and thought, "hmmm, I think I'd like to read that!"  Maybe maternity leave has made me more desperate for intellectual rigor than I realized . . .

 

Louis D. Brandeis: A Life

Melvin Urofsky

What I think I'm going to read next

Again, problems with the Amazon thing, so no nice picture of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

VOX clearly still hasn't worked out the kinks with the Amazon function . . .

I tried to post this with the picture of the Prospect Park West cover and wasn't able to figure it out.  Anybody?

Here are my (brief) thoughts on PPW:

In my defense, I don't actually live in Park Slope, so I'm not a complete cliche.  Also, a huge group of my friends want to read it, so we're going to pass it around.  And I bought it cheap at the Strand. 

That said, it feels like I'm reading mommy porn.  Or status porn, as Amy Sohn's idea of character development is to name the brands that her characters use or wear.  I would rather know more about the characters' intellectual life and less about where their boy shorts are from, please.  The novel is also really meanspirited towards women (mothers, in particular) as well as racist.

That said, can I put it down?  No.  It's like a wrecked Volvo in the middle of Prospect Park itself; horrible, but you can't look away . . .

 

I'm a bad, bad person.

Prospect Park West: A Novel

Amy Sohn

From yesterday's magazine . . .

I've always wanted to read some Margaret Drabble, and this article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine upped the ante.

Complaint

Just tried to recreate my list of books to read on the "new and improved" New York Public Library website.  It's HORRIBLE.  There is no clear way to designate the books you'd like to put on your list once you've pulled up a record, and the whole site is terribly slow.  Why do institutions take something that's working perfectly well and ruitn it?  Consultants gone awry, I'm  betting.

Perfect casting!

Barney's Version is one of my favorite books ever, so when I started seeing references to a film of the same name being shot I hardly dared hope . . . And then I saw that Paul Giamatti was starring in said film, and I realized that it was, in fact, the same book -- because Paul Giamatti is the Best. Casting. Choice. Ever. For. This. Film.

Barney's Version is a Canadian novel -- more specifically, it's a Montreal-e-an (how would one say that?) novel, or a Montreal-e-an Jewish novel, really.  It's wry.  It's dark. It's hilarious.  I discovered it when researching Montreal for our honeymoon and came across a series of Slate articles on Montreal written by Gary Shteyngart, otherwise known as my secret boyfriend.  I knew that if Gary liked Barney's Version, I would too -- and, in fact, I ended up liking it even more than either Russian Debutante's Handjob -- I mean, Handbook -- or Absurdistan.  Shteyngart, while not the writer Richler is (although I like Shteyngart a lot), shares a certain sensibility with Richler, as well as a dark humor and love of Montreal.

I can't wait for this film!

Surprise reviewer

For some reason, I wouldn't have guessed that Jonathan Lethem would be a Lorrie Moore fan.  That said, his review of her latest book, A Gate at the Stairs, made me want to get my hands on it ASAP.  (Interestingly, Michiko's review wasn't nearly as glowing . . . I've never really understood the New York Times' practice of having the weekday book reviewer review a book in addition to the weekend reviewer.  Is the idea that the weekend reviewer is often a guest, rather than a Times staffer?)