I love this book! The author just has this way of making you smile while you read. I just wanted the book to keep going.

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.

Absolutely must-read, right up there with E.B. White's "This Is New York" for evocative writing about the Big Apple. Gopnik has an incredible knack for weaving his life experiences together into some great riffs on trust, busy-ness, underdogs, the meaning of parenthood, and life in the midst of death. The essay on his daughter's imaginary friend Charlie Ravioli is phenomenal.

I almost can't convey how much I adore Adam Gopnik. I've recommended this book so many times to so many different people. If nothing else, be sure to check out "Death of a Fish" and "Last of the Metrozoids." Stunning stuff.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book! Along with THE WILD TREES by Richard Preston, it is one of the best books I've read in 2009. The essays are everything essays should be: lyrical, self-reflective, and often hilarious (Charlie Ravioli!). They are also about NYC, one of my favorite places in the world. What's not to love?

A collection of charming, polished essays. Satisfying, but by the end, like a stuffy dinner party, it was all a little forced, a little self-conscious, and not at all relaxing.

I picked this up at my parents' library in Johnstown, PA while visiting them for Easter. I enjoy reading books about New York while I am away from home, just as I enjoy reading books about other places (especially England and Ireland) when I am in New York. I am about 1/3 of the way in, and I really am enjoying Gopnick's observations. I have read several of these previously, in the New Yorker, and did not pick up on the humor so much at that time. Now I am really getting it. These are essays, so far, on upper-middle-class New Yorker issues, like parenting, real estate, Fairway, and I relate enough to recognize what he means -- while not relating enough to find the fretting funny. Enjoyable.

I find it amazing how insightful Adam Gopnik is. I find his essays and books to be full of nuggets where it is as if seeing something for the first time or seeing the "why" behind something that I have taken for granted or routinely observed. This book was full of seemingly ordinary, day-to-day occasions, but he ties them all together in such fascinating ways.

Charlie Ravioli is still the best thing Gopnik has written (in my opinion), but there are some good stories in here including the intro. But there are also some examples of extreme naval-gazing and the kind of name-dropping that makes the rest of the country roll their eyes at haughty New Yorkers.

Didn't finish

Literary but sometimes moved a little slow.

this is the 2nd bk I've read by Gopnik. I liked his first bk, "Paris to the Moon" better than this one. He frequently writes for the New Yorker. He writes abt his own life. he's got 2 kids and is married. it's a slice of life, NYC style. I'm abt half way through, and I'm not sure I'll completely finish it.