I loved this book. I can’t decide what I enjoyed more; Ruth’s descriptions of her disguises and their personas, or her food-talk. I could have done without the recipes, and the reprints of her reviews necessarily repeated ideas she’d already written about in the main text, but those were small prices to pay for a fabulous story told in a wonderful voice.

A fun little soap opera.

Even more my kind of book than The Omnivore’s Dilemma; Pollan tends to repeat himself a little bit, and he needs to be edited a little more tightly in general, but his ideas are wonderful, and wonderfully expressed. Lovely.

Only two or three duds in the book.

I really wish I’d read this before I watched the film, because it was such a beautifully faithful interpretation of the book that reading the book caused the movie to play, quite unstoppably, in my mind the entire time.

Oh well.

Brilliant stuff.

Hard to top that first scene on top of the mountain with the pee, but he totally does.

Oddly uplifting. Queens are so philosophical.

I’m liking it okay so far; it’s a bit patchy and occasionally a bit forced, but how could it not be, honestly. It’s making fun gym reading for me on the elliptical.

It’s weird reading Augusten Burroughs at last after having listened to David Sedaris for so long; their voices are very similar. There’s a very slightly odd back and forth in the tone between being totally mordant and sardonic and being self-pitying, but he must have been very young indeed when he wrote it so I’m probably asking too much.

Grin.