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A**M
It's a fun read!
What a fun read...to see the city I've lived in all my life through the view of a wide spectrum of writers! I especially loved reading about Susan Sontag's meeting with Thomas Mann when she was just a teenager; and Cecil Castellucci's excerpt from "Beige" perfectly captures the LA punk rock scene, as a young girl gets tossed into a summer with her estranged dad.
A**L
It includes many different voices and perspectives garnered over a long time with some amazing writing by both well-known and voices who should be ...
As a long-time former denizen of L.A. I found this book surprising and delightful. It includes many different voices and perspectives garnered over a long time with some amazing writing by both well-known and voices who should be and celebrates the amazing range of experience in that vast, diverse megalopolis. Highly recommend.
O**H
A slim volume of literary gems
This book reminds me of the delicious buzz of a happy hour meal at a treasured restaurant. The pieces in this volume are often bite-sized, but are so well crafted and finely chosen and broad in scope, literally covering hundreds of years of life in LA, they were clearly assembled by an editor gifted with an insatiable curiosity and the authority of a historian.Who knew, for instance, that Susan Sontag was a Valley Girl in the late '40s? But there she is recalling the afternoon she spent as a teenager visiting her early literary hero Thomas Mann, who then lived in LA. Or that in the first half of the 20th Century the city was a genuine mecca for magnificent bookstores, one of which figured in the plot of Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep". Other gems in the collection tell about the life of a young Hollywood agent during the Blacklist-era and a Canadian girl who visits her estranged dad, who turns out to be a drummer in an obscure LA grunge band. My favorite selection might be the transcript of Vin Scully's broadcast of the 9th inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965. Scully's description is so vivid, suspenseful and precise that it reads as though he had time to write the whole thing rather than merely creating oral poetry down to the final pitch.It's a masterful collection, one squeezed into a tidy168 pages. Book 2 is scheduled for November -- and I can't wait to sample that one too.
Trustpilot
1 month ago
5 days ago
