Mark

Arthur Phillips's previous novels are also very different from usual fictional fare and evidence of his growing mastery. Highly Recommended!

Here is "an embarrassment of riches," a great collection well worth reading & now in paperback.

Because it's funny? And it makes you think of your own life? And who cares if it's not a novel per se? Wouldn't it be more descriptive to call this a prose poem? (What's this?) Isn't the idea (& the actuality) of a book that'll both put a smile on your face & make you examine your life just irresistable?

Want to hear some of my favorite queries? "Can you think of a musical instrument useful in murder other than piano wire?" "Is it your impression that people who worked in animation in the 1930s did more drugs than people who work in it today?" Have you ever tried to carry on a conversation with someone all in questions? As you're prompted to give an answer, isn't it all about you? Aren't the "advance praise" blurbs on the book jacket's back just the best question-settling addenda to this Staff Pick?

Roger Angell has lived a charmed life in his 80+ years and has written about it with grace, modesty and wit. his prose style has an emotional and mindful immediacy that enthralls. From stories of his love of baseball (Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio) to brief sketches of his New Yorker colleagues (William Maxwell, Donald Barthelme), Angell delivers a series of greatly pleasing reads. I especially liked the family portraits of his aunt and mother and (most moving) his stepfather, E.B. White.

his recollections of driving cars in the 30's, his army experience of WWII, as well as his worl editing fiction at The New Yorker, are fascinating and free of expected sentiment. Like its author, this book covers a lot of ground and doesn't disappoint. I recommend it highly.