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Title: The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup : My Encounters with Extraordinary People by Susan Orlean ISBN: 0-375-75863-1 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.53 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A thoroughly entertaining, fun and inspiring book
Comment: After reading Susan Orlean's excellent The Orchid Thief last year and having followed some of her recent writing in The New Yorker (particularly a fantastic piece on the hapless New Hampshire girl-rock group from the 1970's, The Shaggs), I was eagerly awaiting this collection of profiles. It not only surpassed my very high expectations for literary quality, it is one of the funniest and most entertaining, lively and moving books I have read in quite awhile. She gets these people down perfectly and is a master of the revealing touch. The opening chapter on a typical 10-year-old American boy is my favorite -- it allows the reader to enter a kid's world very much from his point of view while overlaying a beautifully reported and crafted commentary that manages all at once to be empathetic, witty,ironic and highly informative. The ending of this piece, like the ending to both the introduction and the title piece on the first female matador in Spain which concludes the book, is hauntingly poignant and gets to what Orlean is really about here: showing the extraordinarily captivating nature of what seemingly ordinary people are really like when closely examined in their own subcultures. The intelligence and insight she brings to bear in joyfully sharing with the reader what she has discovered is what makes this book so wonderful.
Rating: 5
Summary: I loved this book.
Comment: Susan Orlean writes with more grace, style and wit than anyone in the magazine world today. These well-reported, beautifully crafted profiles of both known and unknown characters show her at the top of her form. Orlean has a knack for being at the right place at the right time to capture a telling detail or quote and, contrary to the wrongheaded and ignorant comments in a few of the customer reviews here, she is, if anything, self-effacing and unobtrusive as she brings the reader deeply into the lives of her subjects. Literary journalism as an art form necessarily includes the author's voice and point of view -- these are what make it less artificial and far more interesting than standard "objective" reporting. The rave reviews for this book in the New York Times and other publications are well justified.
Rating: 2
Summary: vastly overrated
Comment: Look at the cover of this book and you'll see who and what it's really about. It's all about SO; her subject matter is irrelevant both to her and, consequently, to the reader. Worse, even her style, which seems to sucker in a lot of poeple, is not exactly her own. If you want to read what she's read, and cribbed from, track down a copy of Mr. Personality, by Mark Singer, also a New Yorker writer but a far finer one. Really, I don't see how SO can pass MS in the NYer's hallways and not hide her head in shame. Singer is by far the more human writer. He reserves his style for his short Talk of the Town pieces, drifting it to the side for his longer, more important pices. Unlike SO, he knows when to take it down a notch in order to add some real heart and feeling to his writing. SO's stuff, from one story to the next, is stylistically the same beginning to end. Half.com often has copies of Singer's book. When you find it, be sure to check out what's on the cover; it ain't a picture of Singer.
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Title: The Orchid Thief : A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean ISBN: 044900371X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 04 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Saturday Night by Susan Orlean ISBN: 0394573366 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 21 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Orchid Fever : A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy by Eric Hansen ISBN: 0679771832 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Mr. Personality by Mark Singer ISBN: 0394572106 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 24 December, 1988 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Best American Magazine Writing 2003 by American Society of Magazine Editor ISBN: 0060567759 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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