I've enjoyed dipping into this. It nhas introduced me to several authors I didn't know about. I shall be searching out some stuff by Julia Alvarez, Paul Auster, A. M. Holmes, Gish Gen, Barry Lopez, Haruki Murakami and David Sedaris (although I did know about him). And.... Gay Talese is wonderful. ( )

I have been dipping in and out of this volume for nearly a year. Yesterday I sat down determined to finish. There are quite a few well-known authors represented, and also some I never heard of. This reminds me of my favorite music CDs – movie soundtracks. I get a nice sampling of an extremely wide-ranging variety of music. Many times, it pushes me back to the music store to get more CDs by a single artist. Sometimes it reminds me how much I detest certain styles (read Country Western).
There were also some odd selections. Al Franken reprinted a NYT review blasting his book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot. He also included a letter he wrote to the NYT responding to the review and Jean Kirkpatrick’s response to his letter. Pretty funny.
The entry by Joyce Carol Oates (one of my all-time favorite writers) was chilling and her head note offered some insight into the spate of books revolving around violence. Natalie Angier’s “Confessions of a Lonely Atheist” was wonderful, as were selections by Anne Tyler, Doris Lessing, David Sedaris, and Arianna Huffington, along with many others. Five stars!
--Jim, 6/15/07 ( )

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