This was an OK read. Maybe I am getting cynical. This struck me as a family sitcom set in academia. I did get a number of chuckles out of it. And it is put together well, but it is probably destined to fade from my memory quickly. Maybe I have a hard time identifying with a clueless, middle-aged, male English professor. I think I would have liked this better as told from the perspective of his wife.

Left in the Little Free Library

At the beginning, I didn't think I would like it, but I stuck with it and started to really enjoy it. This might be due to the fact that, although not all of these things happened to me, almost everything in the book has happened somewhere I've taught or to someone I've known. Other than that, I think this was a good addition to the man-are-assholes category of fiction, which I enjoy.

Published in 1997 and, though it’s satire, nearly a quarter century later the humor serves mostly to put into relief the kind of glib racism, homophobia, and misogyny that current social and political discourse aims to unmask and dismantle. Still, I read the whole thing, out of a mixture of obsessiveness (started, ergo must finish), morbid fascination, and, I confess, appreciation — it is a masterfully crafted “caper” (an overused word in book-jacket blurbs) that describes the action over the course of an eventful week in the narrator’s life.