My Take (changing the title of this section here because, turns out, I rarely “review” the book):

The husband and I have read many books out loud to each other, mostly on road trips. For example:

• The Princess Bride by William Goldman (driving across country to Penn, 1990)
• Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman (vacation to the Southwestern states, 1995?)
• In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick (driving around New England, 2021)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (sitting on the couch of our cute Latona apartment, 1994?)

So a couple years ago when we were headed off for a romantic getaway, I bought us this book based entirely on vibes. It’s a dual-author book of back and forth letters. Thought it might help us remember how to be lovey-dovey. Unfortunately, it takes a little while before this book gets any kind of lovey, and it wasn’t a very long drive.

So I’m the reader and the husband is the driver (carsick-prone), but these days listening to me read quickly makes him sleepy. I feel like this was less of an issue in the 90s. We hadn’t yet been married for a couple decades and he wasn’t as sick of listening to me yammer!

All that to say, we didn’t get very far with our reading on that trip. Fast forward to this book coming up to be read for this Shelf blog, and the husband gallantly agreed to renew our joint reading effort. Taking on a character, we alternated reading chapters/letters to each other. I was Blue from the Garden (“a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter”) and he was Red from the Agency (“a post-singularity technotopia”). We finished it at home, safe and cozy in a way that would have made our kids’ eyes roll.

Thus, you might be thinking I have all kinds of deep thoughts on the nature of love, my lovely spouse, our decades-long relationship, and all kinds of other nonsense. But Nope, only the nonsense. This book is a story about star-crossed lovers, like Romeo/Juliet, Tony/Maria, and, most importantly recently, Shane and Ilya (hence the nonsense). This calls for a table:

ThisIsHowYouLoseTheTimeWar	HeatedRivalry
Red and Blue are spies on rival sides of the Time War	Shane and Ilya are hockey players on rival teams of the “MLH”
Red/Blue occasionally cross paths (murder and mayhem) while writing letters and cleverly hiding them in seeds, shooting stars, smoke, poison, etc.	Shane/Ilya occasionally cross paths (sex and hockey) while texting and “cleverly” hiding behind the code names Jane and Lily
Red/Blue travel across multiple times and alternate histories. Despite a complex metaverse numbering system, the location and time jumps are hard to follow but do serve to convey the slow burn of their love	Shane/Ilya travel on multiple hockey road trips and over years of summers off. Despite the title cards, the location and time jumps are hard to follow but do serve to convey the slow burn of their love
R/B live in abject terror of being discovered and killed by their own sides	S/I live in abject terror of being discovered and reviled by their loyal fans and teammates
They get discovered, but then run off together	They run off together, but then get discovered

I could go on (loving despite barely knowing the other, the personal and professional risk-taking, the whole same-sex thing), but I don’t want you to think I have spent any time analyzing Heated Rivalry! (Adorably, the husband was game to watch the hockey boy show with me — a fact he would probably prefer I not mention, but mostly because he thinks Scott and Kip are the cuter couple and doesn’t want to have to fight you.)

(Finished reading the book May 20, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 198/4 = 49.5

Review:

Usually about halfway through reading a “shelf” book, I figure out what I’m going to write about. Comes to me in a flash, a bolt, an inspiration. Often just a general notion, but until now there has always been a something. With this book I got nothing. Some little glimmers perhaps, but nothing useful or blog-worthy. Instead, here were the train cars of my thoughts as I chugged along:

• “Giving insane All Fours vibes.”
• “Only a quarter of the way through, and this story is resolving. What more could happen?”
• “Oh, that was only the Backstory!”
• “I am not this book’s target audience.”
• “I get that reference!”
• “Oh no, this is set in 2020!?!”
• “What did Minneapolis do to get all the crap it’s been through these last several years?”
• “Neatly wrapped up.”

If I was making a conspiracy theorist’s bulletin board of index cards and string connecting all the books I’ve been reading — seriously considering trying to build one! — this book would be doing a lot of work for me. Tookie mentions many fancy-pants books that I have/will read, including Sula and The Known World — maybe even Proust, if I can hack it — coming up in this blog. That’s the ego-inflating part. Less self-aggrandizing are all the hoi polloi books it reminds me of. It’s set at least partly in 2020 like the aptly named romcom Romantic Comedy — a book I enjoyed but could hardly reflect a more different pandemic experience. Erdrich self-inserts with gentle self-awareness (“She kept sending out emails that were supposed to buck up our spirits but did the opposite.”) that feels so much less cringey than Dave Eggers’ attempt in Monk of Mokha — the book I didn’t want to talk about in my last post. And of course the bookstore setting connects to Storybook Ending, the breakout novel of Seattle Times columnist Moira MacDonald. I wanted to love that book, but could not get past the first few chapters despite the bookstore allure and hometown pandering. Too many sad sack characters and a plot built entirely on a middle-school-level note-passing mishap.

That’s all fine and well, but you might ask, “My Dear Blogger, are you going to write anything insightful or interesting about THIS book?” To that I say: No, I don’t think so. Going back to my fourth boxcar thought of “I am not this book’s target audience,” I’m definitely not feeling on solid ground about weighing in here. Did this book speak to me personally? No. Was it trying to? Probably not. Is it feeling self-satisfied that a lot of this went over my head and under my radar? It should.

Topics I’m not touching with a ten-foot pole:

• Absolutely anything about Indigenous peoples: experience, history, practices, beliefs, etc.
• What Minneapolis has gone through this decade
• Ghosts
• Louise Erdrich as a person

Fair game:

• Other books
• Literary devices
• A general agreement about how much 2020 sucked
• Louise as a character (“Age had broadened her face and nose, plumped up her cheeks, grayed her hair, and given her an air of general tolerance.”)

Also, my last post was so long I didn’t want you to think that every post of mine was going to be a tome! (Finished reading the book May 15, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 374/3 = 124 2/3

(check out my latest update to the graphic organizer page that tries to put these into context)

Review:

And now for the Title Fight: My absolute favorite kids’ book of all time, ever — enough superlatives? — Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (obviously) versus one of my least favorite (shallow, immature, obvious), but somehow beloved and prolific authors, Dave Eggers. Slam dunk for me, you’d think, right? Let’s get into it…

And so I first read Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius back in the day (for a former, now-defunct, book group) but didn’t finish (my old bookmark tells me I got to page 175) because I found it all of the things I put in parentheses above. I could see what he was trying to do, but it just screamed 24-year-old Guy! to me and I wasn’t having it. I was maybe 35 at the time and already too world-weary for all that goofy, self-important angst. Thus set in stone both my opinion of Dave Eggers and of memoirs in general (meh, but also wait until you have more distance, people, please — I’m looking at you, Educated!).

And add to that my history with WTWTA: a book I have read and enjoyed my entire life. The first book I could and can recite entirely from memory. A book whose every moment and image is inextricably intertwined with my childhood dreams and inner monologues. The book I trot out and inflict on any small child who will sit still long enough.

And so The Wild Things is a novelization of the beloved children’s story. Eggers wrote an average of 7.8 pages for every page that Sendak wrote. This is roughly 75,000 words to 338 (222:1). (Of those 338 words, 35 are “and,” which begins 40% of the sentences and keeps things clipping along.) The question remains, were all those extra words and pages worth the paper? Honestly, I’m not sure. Now, I have my own childhood dreams and inner monologues (desire for freedom, fantasy, and unconditional love) all mixed up with Dave Eggers’ childhood dreams and inner monologues (exploration of trauma, abandonment, and fear of failure) and it’s making me feel all mixy-uppy. He may have a rich, deep, and imaginative take on the wild things’ interpersonal struggles, but why, with my highly subjective and possibly outdated opinions of him, would I want Dave Eggers’ CD&IM all mixed up with mine?

And to be begrudgingly fair, it’s a well-done book. Well-crafted, quickly paced, mostly not annoying, brave. Not sure how I would have felt if it wasn’t written by Eggers and/or not about WTWTA, but pretty sure I wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place. I’ll need to come back to this after another few years of reading/reciting WTWTA and see how much of Eggers’ version has stuck in my craw. (Finished reading the book April 24, 2026)

Adaptations nobody needs:

• Madeline by Chuck Palahniuk
• Bread and Jam for Francis by Wally Lamb

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 

TWT: 288/3 = 96

For reference: WTWTA (37/5 = 7.4) is my all-time high; compared to 530/2 = 265 (all-time low) for HWofSG

(check out my latest update to the graphic organizer page that tries to put this into context)

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Good names for and drama amongst the Wild Things: 4
• Pain it caused me to say anything nice about Eggers, a probably perfectly reasonable human: 5

P.S. My most precious copy (of the 4 or so I own) of Where the Wild Things Are is a 25th Anniversary Hardback Edition (1989) inscribed:

“Christmas 1990 For Keiko — Because finally she’s grown-up enough…. All my Love Dad”

Lovely, nostalgic, and wry (I was 21 at the time!), it’s one of the only things I have in my dad’s handwriting that he wrote just for me.

Also well-loved is my copy of a book called Elephant by Byron Barton (First Edition Hardback, 1971). It’s a petite, 29-page — adorably defaced by me — pictures-only story of a girl who loves elephants and, like Max, has a fantasy adventure in the night but is home in time for a show of love and understanding from her parents. This was inscribed:

“To Keiko ~ June 1972 so you can read to yourself. Love from Mommy”

Lovely, maternal, and wry (I was 3 but already reading!), this also is one of the very few things I have from my mom in her handwriting.

It’s a good thing I understand my parents’ sense of humor — it’s also mine, and regularly inflicted on my own children — or I might be a little put out about the views they had of me.

Review:

What a breath of fresh air to be reading a woman writer again! I’ve heard that in blind wine taste tests, most people can’t tell expensive wine from cheap. Hmmm, wait — that’s not a good metaphor here. Let’s try this one: Remember that Supreme Court justice quote about pornography, “I know it when I see it”? Okay seriously, what am I trying to say here?

These last two books I’ve read for this blog have had a lot in common (just like the two before that). Set during WWII, with deep dives into a niche interest (radio shows/diving), missing and/or dead fathers, something akin to romance but not exactly, more than 400 pages. But oh, what a difference a gender — and an unabridged copy — makes! I’m not a wine (or a pornography) connoisseur but I certainly felt and appreciated the differences between these two books and authors, even though I couldn’t necessarily tell you exactly what it was that made the biggest impact.

I enjoyed so much about this book (here comes the part of my review where I list): Great characters with a lot of depth and capacity for change, complex storylines with heartfelt dilemmas and not-completely obvious paths taken, super readable and fast-paced (had its slower spots but I still flew through them), the (brand-new just now) three H’s (humor, heartbreak, history hope hootenannies? — it’s a work in progress). That said, its list of supporting characters does sound like something from an SNL Stefon skit: an aging tart, a mute bosun, a goat-owning gangster, and a badger in a Borsalino.

I just read the top review of this book on Goodreads and that reviewer, and most of the next several, hated it! Many of them were comparing this book unfavorably to her last book, Goon Squad. I can see how that might be something of a letdown. Maybe we like or dislike books based on how they compare to the last thing we read. Should that be a required disclosure whenever reviewing anything? “This stack of saltines was four and a half stars, compared to the fermented shark bladder I ate yesterday.” I know it’s more complicated than that, but still, some context wouldn’t hurt.

The picture above is a sculpture that I serendipitously came across (at Matzke Sculpture Park on Camano Island) right around the time I was considering pitching this book to my book group. It’s by Deb McCunn who sculpted it after reading Manhattan Beach. She titled the piece Andrea the Diver after Andrea Motley Crabtree, the first female diver in the US Army and the inspiration for the book. She sculpts women as rabbits doing cool things as a counter-narrative to the Playboy bunny. Check out her work here: https://www.matzkefineart.com/artists-2/deb-mccunn-clay/

(Finished reading the book April 19, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 

438/4 = 108 (this metric clearly favors short books, but then again so do I)

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Relief at reading a book by a female writer: 5
• Wondering now if that relief blinded me a little: 3
• Looking forward to the next book on my shelf by a guy writer I already don’t like much: 1

Bechdel Test: Pass!!!

Review:

Dear John Dunning, I am so sorry! You wrote what is probably a lovely book and I totally screwed up the reading of it.

Several years ago I read and loved both Booked to Die and The Bookman’s Wake. I love your fast-paced, plot-forward, suspenseful, unspooling narrative. You managed to make the (I can only imagine, dull and dusty) inner workings of the rare book world into — what else? — a real page-turner.

So I was very much looking forward to Two O’ Clock, Eastern Wartime with its intrigue and deep dive into your second love — old-time radio shows. But I’m embarrassed to say, I went and made an audiobook rookie error.

I own your book, of course, and started reading it, but I also checked out the audiobook, as I am wont to do so I can continue with a book while I do the dishes and walk the dog, etc. What I didn’t realize is that I had checked out — gasp — an abridged copy! I didn’t think about it too hard as the book clipped along at a rapid pace, but I did notice that I wasn’t really getting caught up in the story as I had with your earlier books. The characters weren’t as deep, the story not as fleshed out, the inner workings not as riveting — and none of it was your fault! It wasn’t until I was mostly done with the audiobook (only 40 minutes, but two long chapters left?) that I realized my grave mistake. By that time, so much of the book had flown by, along with my interest, that I just couldn’t see myself going back and rereading any of it.

Please forgive me, Mr. Dunning! After I’m done with all this shelf-reading nonsense, I will go back and read another one of your books the way it was meant to be read. With eyeballs.

(Finished reading the book April 6, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 

This doesn’t seem fair to do

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Regret: 5
• Embarrassment: 4
• Plans to reread: 0

Bechdel Test: Fail – at least not in the version I read heard.

Review:

I’m just figuring out that writing about books I have enjoyed reading is much more difficult than complaining about the ones I didn’t like at all. When I’m complaining, I’m much less worried about conveying nuance and am instead just trying to be entertaining. But with this book I want to do it justice and possibly even make you want to read it. Here goes…

Reading Universal Harvester wasn’t so much of a roller coaster ride where you can see what’s coming, as it was one of those amusement park drop towers where you never know what’s going to happen next. There’s such a pervasive sense of dread and concern for the characters with no sense of how anything was going to get resolved — and, full disclosure, many things don’t. Full of suspense, ambiguity — and some might say plot holes — Universal Harvester is all about place (Iowa) and vibes and parents. Weirdly not unlike The Brothers K (intense religious devotion and all!) but thankfully so much shorter.

It’s dark, often literally, and sinister and slow, and also the opposite: insightful and loving, a tiny bit hopeful, and full of surprising details that kept my brain on alert. Reminds me of that Velazquez painting — the one from that book group book I never finished — where you’ve been looking at it wondering if this was the behind-the-scenes for every royal portrait, and then you’re like, wait, there’s a whole extra shadowy person talking to the nun in the corner and also a little person kicking the poor dog?

So there you go. I’ve said only good things about this book and given away nothing. Your takeaway: if you like unpredictable rides with clever details, you should read this book. Wait, you need actual information in order to make an informed decision? Okay, so it starts off about this guy Jeremy who works in a video store — remember those? (Sorry, Scarecrow Video) — and people start returning videos saying there are weird bits edited into them. Jeremy and a friend start looking into what might be going on, and get caught up in a probably — but kinda hard to tell exactly — disturbing situation that opens up a whole backstory can-of-worms.

Bears repeating: many of the plot points don’t get very satisfyingly (or at all) cleared up, but the author and I warned you of that early on, so it’s your own fault if you feel betrayed. Still, the writing and overall craft made reading Universal Harvester worthwhile and engaging for me. And what I’ve recently and begrudgingly learned from the author of Audition: apparently not every novel is a puzzle to be solved. (Finished reading the book March 24, 2026)

“He quickly put on his disguise, the one he’d been born with” (p. 156)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 

214/4 = 43 page/stars

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Steep slopes: 4
• Soft landings: 1
• Eddies: 3

Bechdel Test: Pass – Finally! (Alison Bechdel never said that the two women talking about something other than a dude had to be sane)

(Only one more book to go until I get to the next non-dude writer!)

Review:

At my age — that’s a new fun way to start a sentence — I feel less and less concerned about breaking my own make-believe rules. These days I don’t always have to do the dishes before I go to bed, or respond to every funny text from my spouse with a HAHA (you already know I think you’re funny). I’m still not completely ready to swear in front of my kids or wear black and non-denim blue together, but I’m working on it. My original plan for this blog was that I would buckle down and finish every book on my shelf and then have something insightful, or whatever, to say about them. But this book’s 645 pages of moral responsibility and inherited philosophy has broken something in me, so I’m shaking myself free of my own short-sighted rules and doing whatever I want. Chaos!

On its face, Brothers K is tailor-made for me. A Pacific NW-based family epic about baseball? What’s not to love? Apparently all the religion-y stuff. Normally, I’m good with reading about religion and religious people, ideas, quandaries, explorations, evolutions, etc. Might sound strange coming from me, but I think my issues with this book come from the way the most religious characters were being conveyed as somewhat ridiculous straw men. And also that — here’s me flogging a dead Bechdel horse — they were often the female characters (straw women, if you will). To be fair, there were also science-minded female characters, but alas still portrayed as somewhat ridiculous (i.e. Grandawma). The four sons whose disparate religious paths (molded by a devoutly religious mother, a devoutly science-minded grandmother, and a devoutly baseball-y father) we were going to follow for the remainder of the novel — aptly in keeping with the main theme of The Brothers Karamazov — I just didn’t find that interesting. Blah, blah Mother, Father, and Gma set children in motion. Blah, blah, kids probably turn out different from each other. Too much like my own life but with less well-written characters!

My understanding is that I got through all the best baseball parts, so I’m good with being done now. Next up, a book about tractors or something…

(Finished reading the book Feb 19, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars): 

266/2 = 133 pages to have to get through to earn each star

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Likability of the ridiculous baseball-y characters: 5
• Likability of the ridiculous religious-y characters: 0
• Resulting imbalance as you might imagine: 5

Bechdel Test: Slightly-less fail. The sisters (and grandma) have a whole scene to themselves that includes the one of the best lines from the book:

“You may grow up to become a gargoyle, or a harridan, or a guttersnipe!” she snapped. “We can’t possibly know – and thank goodness not! What most of us become as adults would terrify us a children.” p. 214

(Only two more books to go until I get to the next woman writer)

Review:

I usually write my review immediately after I finish the book, but this review had to take a bit of a backseat to something “more important” (tax season – blecch) and now I’m having some trouble. Paddy Clarke is blurring in with the other four or five books, pretty much in a row, that I’ve read with the father-son theme. Crow Road, Billy Bathgate (father-figure anyhow), The Road (not read or reviewed for this blog but Wow!), Summerland, and with The Brothers K next up. So I’ll do my darnedest not to repeat myself too much, but here goes.

Paddy Clarke is the good parts of those books done even better. It had the wonderfully disjointed narrative structure of Crow Road, but with such a sense of reflecting the way a kid’s thoughts jump around and still end up getting somewhere. Much of this felt like a collection of connected short stories, until, like a knitting a sweater, a subtle pattern develops and the individual rows slowly begin to grow into a novel.

Where Billy Bathgate is clearly narrated by the older version of the character in vocabulary and reflections, Paddy is a ten year-old telling as quickly as he can in the moment. Both have their merits, but you may be able to tell from my own style that I love a chaotic, child-like voice.

Okay, so The Road does tension and foreboding way better, but Paddy Clarke does a pretty good job in its much smaller way with its smaller, but still life changing, devastations. We see his confusion about his family (‘I didn’t understand. She was lovely. He was nice.’), know where it’s going long before he does, and can only watch as it all slowly unfurls.

And Paddy knows its audience and understands its scope (apparently encompassing every single thought a boy can think) much better than Summerland does. Also, this book is hilarious and, therefore, well-titled. The others not so much.

The Brothers K is up next and that will be the test to see if these books can go five for five with father-son books where the son loses (in some form) the father. Just like if there’s a dog in a story it’s going to die. Can it be done or it that the whole point of the genre? Stay tuned…

(Finished book Jan 21, 2026)

Payoff (pages per stars): 

282/4 = 70.5 pages per star

Guest metrics:

• Surprising boy thoughts per page: minimum 282/282 = 1 boy insight per page at the very least
• Awards to stars: 1 to 4 (Guess fancy award folks didn’t like it as much as I did)

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Quotation marks: 0
• Educational use of 1960’s Irish schoolboy slang (e.g gick, pong, mickey): 5

Bechdel Test: Still Fail! (Only three more books to go until I get to the next woman writer)

Review:

I didn’t have much of anything bad to say about my last book (you know, except that one big thing), but with this one I just don’t really have much of anything good or bad to say at all. It was…fine. Sorry SH. But then again, when I asked you recently if you remembered even giving me this book you didn’t, so maybe you won’t take this personally.

The story was fine: Coming of age and family mysteries unfurl with much effort and many missteps on the part of our mostly inept and reluctant but still scrappy hero.

Setting was pretty good: Back and forth between Glasgow and other exotic Scottish locales.

Characters were okay: Some quirky, others a bit blandly typical. The main (male) character has plenty of angst and the female characters, even the smart ones, are all game for plenty of sex. Reads much like an older writer writing about what he remembers/wishes his own youth was like. (Let me check something…okay so the author was 38 when he wrote this book about a bunch of twenty-somethings.) Killed off quite a few along the way, so that was something.

Writing was good: generally well written, engaging, strong voice, clipped along and not too wordy but still clever enough with the language and the turns of phrase.

Structure was the best thing about it: story was told quite disjointedly. Mostly linear main storyline all mixed up with various blasts from the past sprinkled throughout with no warning. Really good for my brain trying to keep it all straight.

Have I said anything of substance about this book yet? Not really. Wikipedia calls it a Bildungsroman (such a cool word) and they summarize it thusly: “Prentice McHoan’s preoccupation with death, sex, his relationship with his father, unrequited love, sibling rivalry, a missing uncle, cars, alcohol and other intoxicants, and God, against the background of the Scottish landscape.” This makes it sound only a little better than it was.

(Finished book approximately Dec 23, 2025 but I didn’t write it down so who knows)

Payoff (pages per stars): 

501/2 = 250.5 pages per star. That’s a lot of pages of meh

(Trying out other metrics for the mathy among us, and will take suggestions):

• Various explosions: approximately 1 in every 100 pages
• Dead friends/relatives: ditto

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Inconvenience of reading this book while exer-cycling and holding it open with a stick while I pedaled: 4
• Anything of substance to say: 0

Review:

I don’t have anything particularly negative to say about this book (except for the kinda big thing I’m going to say later), which is a bit of a departure from my last few reviews. It’s a pretty great story – exciting, gripping (is that the same thing?), complex, and well-conceived. The characters are compelling, well-developed, complicated, and gritty. The setting is beautifully drawn and you get plunked down right in it. Now finish each of those three sentences with “in no small part because it’s true.” So much of what’s here is Ripped from the Headlines (of 1935) but done with amazing craft, language, and art, making for a beautiful collage of a novel. When I was done reading the book, I enjoyed reading up on all the “characters” on Wikipedia. The star of the show though is definitely the language. Written entirely in first person, it takes a minute to get used to a street urchin saying things like “a strong ethic prevailed, all the normal umbrages… all the outraged sensibilities… once you accepted the first pure inverted premise.” But then again it made me pretty sure that Billy was going to survive past his youth to learn how to talk like that.

Okay, so here’s the thing that I need to address. What is it about so many books on my shelf written by men in the 1990’s with crappy portrayals of women? I’m getting a little worn out by the dearth of substantial female characters. Most of them apparently existing only to be taken care of or to have sex with. I’m reasonably well-practiced at ignoring that for an otherwise good book from time to time, but so many in a row? In the last five books (one I’m still finishing up) the least egregious has been 2001: A Space Odyssey and only because there were basically no women in it at all. I wish now that I hadn’t started this project with Cat’s Eye. It would have been a breath of fresh air at this point, and I probably would have written a very different review of it than I did. Might need to go back… (Finished book December 9, 2025 – then wrote and sat on this review until after the holidays)

Payoff (pages per stars): 

323/3 = 107 2/3 pages of reading for every star sounds about right for this book even though I enjoyed it.

(Still trying out other metrics for the mathy among us, and will take suggestions):

• Awards to Stars: 4 to 3

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Enjoying all the classic gangster stuff like running numbers and sleeping with the fishes: 4
• Concerns about watching Dustin Hoffman starring in the movie: 0

Bechdel Test: Extra Big Fail! (Only four more books to go until I get to another woman writer)