Alan

Adam Gopnik's writing comes close to poetry at times, and he's an excellent reader of his own work. I enjoyed this book when he was talking about the big issues related to food: what it means, how it relates to who we are as a family or society. But when he got into the details of particular restaurants and cuisine, it felt a little nerdy and boring. So overall, the book had sections of great eloquence and meaning, with occasional dull patches in between.

If you're interested in a showbiz resume, this book gives the bare facts about Carlin's professional life

If a biographer does not have any special access either to the subject of the bio or to people who have inside information, then it's better to study the subject's own works.

I'm a huge fan of Carlin's work, so it was a great disappointment to find that there was so little new information about the man here.

Less of a flip attitude. More attention to detail.

The distance between the writer and his own story.

Performance was standard.

Consider essays and non-fiction by first-rate writers like Philip Lopate, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Ames, David Rackoff, etc.

This is--in effect--an infomercial for the author's more substantial training package--which itself isn't that great either. Here Meier mainly just speaks a variety of Scottish phrases, with very little explanation or teaching. If you want to hear Scottish accents, you can hear them for free on Scottish radio on the internet. If you want to learn to speak with a Scottish accent in a systematic way, it's not going to happen with this short presentation.

Every now and then a book will actually change how I see the world, and this book is one of those. Wonderfully written and beautifully read, it points out a way of thinking that's so ubiquitous it's hard to see. And the author doesn't hammer you with arguments--she mainly just gives the facts and lets you draw the conclusions yourself.