revisit this sometime - gazillions of book darts ( )

This is yet another book I have owned for ages and only just finished reading now. This book was an impulse purchase, bought out of curiosity and with no knowledge whatsoever as to what the book was about.. or even who the author was. One of those, and yet this book ended up being quite the pleasant surprise.

The book is comprised of essays, all dealing with the topic of turning New York City into one's home. The essays, for the most part, take place post-9/11 and the topic of that atrocity does come into play. For the most part, the essays are rather entertaining and involve the writer's family life. Honestly, the book is well worth reading just for the essay on Ravioli, his daughter's imaginary friend.

The book is touching, incredibly funny, a bit sad, and a bit contemplative. It gives you things to think on without turning preachy. I would happily recommend this to anyone who enjoys say, Shirley Jackson's essays on family life. Domesticity can be quite an entertaining thing.

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This collection of essays documents Gopnik's life upon returning to New York City with his wife and young children after living in Paris. The September 11th attacks occur shortly after they move in and they color a lot of the stories in this book. There are humorous bits about Gopnik's therapist, who he believes to be the last Freudian, and his daughter's imaginary friend who is so very New York that he's always too busy to play with her. The most touching story is about Gopnik's friend who is an art historian and football coach and how he spends his final months before dying of cancer presenting lecture's at Washington's National Gallery and coaching Gopnik's son's flag football team. Gopnik has a talent of spinning out a lot of ideas from a small observation, but he also has a proclivity towards white, upper middle class navel gazing. It's a fine edge and he doesn't always land on the right side. ( )

I loved how the author writes about NYC's unique neighborhoods, histories and landmarks from the perspective of raising kids, doing family stuff and making a place "home".

This is one book about New York I could recommend about anyone, with kids or without, who wants to get a sense of place about the Big Apple.

He's a terrific writer, too. ( )

This is a wonderful book. Gopnik writes knowingly about why mothers in NYC have become so child-centered (it is the latest fad, plus the effects of 9/11) and about Kirk Varnedoe, the modern art and sculpture curator at MOMA, who was also a wonderful trainer of kids in football. I did not know that when Varnedoe did his first exhibition at MOMA Gopnik was his collaborator. The exhibit, called High and Low, was about the many connections between low culture, such as comics and advertising, and high culture, such as painting, and was typical of Varnedoe in that it excited a lot of crazed opposition, including that of Hilton Kramer. There are many exciting things in this book, including stories of restaurants, (Gopnik is a major league cook) and children growing up in NY and the Yankees. ( )