I enjoyed reading this collection. There were colorful stories about the wonderfully weird empires of New York City. It's big, funny, selfish, and entertaining. If you're a word nerd in search of a collection that adds color to mundane experience, this is the collection for you. I struggled remembering the title, but the gasps, sighs, chuckles, and grins I sustained throughout empowered me. That made this read a blast.

I have never been to New York. But it's a collection that has a learning curve. If you're not terribly invested in expanding your mind, the stories will read like the ramblings of an unhappy old man. If you can appreciate odd gifts in unusual places, the book might get you through a boring patch in your life. ( )

Rules for Others to Live By: Comments and Self-Contradictions by Tony award winning playwright Richard Greenberg is a collection of his rumination on incidents from his life and observations on the New York lifestyle. I leave the book with the idea that either it is trying too hard to be clever or I am not clever enough to get it. Either way, this one is not the reading experience for me.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2016/10/rules-for-others-to-live-by.html.

Reviewed for the Penguin First to Read program. ( )

Catharsis, anyone?

Rules For Others To Live By is collection of biographical and autobiographical stories from playwright Richard Greenberg’s circle. Since he lives in Chelsea and works on Broadway, that’s what most of it is about. The stories are short (sometimes a single paragraph), but they cover a lot of territory, because they are deeply personal. They are not so much the presentation of a scene or of a person, but Greenberg’s perception of that scene or person, which is a very different narrative. What he notices, and how he values it, is a unique angle for the story and the book. How he navigates it all is revealing in another dimension. Sometimes the stories connect, sometimes the same friends show up in later stories, and at the end, two of his best friends meet for an evening at his place. It’s all very tight in Greenberg’s New York.

My favorite is a two page piece called Opinions. It is pure, vintage Robert Benchley, striking the perfect note of Man thinking outside his little box, trying to master his own world, and second-guessing himself to a standstill. It is a small gem, highly polished.

Another very fine story is Greenberg’s appreciation of his friend Jill Clayburgh. It’s a side of her we never saw, and it’s worth knowing.

There are honest human insights too. After all, Greenberg is first and foremost a playwright. I particularly liked this one of a friend who died young: “On a single afternoon, she made me feel that life in the city could be off the cuff, and abundant. It hasn’t turned out like that. It never does.”

Going forward, I will look at Richard Greenberg plays very differently.

David Wineberg ( )