I have to say that after reading Shopgirl, I was hesitant to give Steve Martin another chance. Hesitant, but certain moments in Shopgirl made me feel as if I sort of owed him.

I am extremely glad that I did. This book is clearly less contemplative and is undoubtedly more overtly sentimental - but I adored almost every moment of it.

The difference lies in the fact that I loved and cared about the characters. I felt closer to them each time the main character managed to reach just a little bit further out of his self-imposed bubble.

Everything worked out almost too perfectly in the end for all of the characters - it reminded me of Love Stargirl in that regard - the kind of optimism that could make one uneasy. Yet, at the same time, I would have been disheartened with any other outcome. I felt like it was deserved.

The style this time seemed less ambitious and less wordy. It was easy and natural, yet the voice was still clear and distinct. I think the character was very believable, although admittedly my knowledge of this kind of mental disorder is very limited.

I guess in that sense, I was also glad that the disorder was not really the focus of the novel. It was a story of a man facing challenges, but it didn't constantly dwell on how different and alien these challenges made him. The character even remarks on this at one point, that each human being has their own secret "rules". I believe that.

This book succeeded in completely endearing me to Steve Martin. I will definitely read his next novel.

Initially, I truly could not get into this book. I was on the verge of thinking that it might be one of those that I wouldn't be able to finish. I just couldn't seem to get a handle on the main character or have any kind of feeling for him. Maybe that was the author's intention. However, as Daniel, the main character, starts to shed some of his obsessions and begins to engage more with'real life', that's when I started to enjoy the book more and develop a certain warmth towards him. It's interesting how my perception changed as the story progressed. In the end, I'm glad that I persevered with it. Although it's not my absolute favorite book, it did turn out to be quite enjoyable.

3.5 stars

This is an easy read with a sweet story. It truly had me laughing more than once.

The simplicity of the narrative makes it accessible to a wide range of readers. The author has managed to create characters that are relatable and endearing.

The story unfolds in a charming way, filled with light-hearted moments and humorous situations. It's the kind of book that you can pick up when you need a break from the hustle and bustle of daily life and just want to enjoy a bit of entertainment.

Overall, it's a pleasant read that doesn't require a lot of deep thinking but still manages to bring a smile to your face. If you're looking for a quick and enjoyable story, this one is definitely worth checking out.

I really liked the book. It had an engaging storyline and interesting characters that kept me hooked throughout.

However, I must admit that I was a bit disappointed with the ending. It felt rather abrupt and unconvincing. All of a sudden, the main character meets the love of his life and miraculously gets over all his phobias. It was as if the author didn't know how to wrap up the story properly and just came up with a convenient solution.

I'm not trying to be too critical here. I understand that writing a book is no easy task, and every author has their own style and approach. But in this case, I think the ending could have been more developed and thought out.

Despite the flaws in the ending, I still recommend the book. It has a lot of redeeming qualities and is definitely worth a read. Just be prepared to skip the last two pages if you want to avoid the let-down. : )

The greatest obstacles are often those that we impose upon ourselves.

As for the deepest wounds, they usually come from those who love us much less than they should by all rights.

This wonderful little book expresses both of these points very eloquently.

It belongs to that popular category of fiction which is told in the first person from the perspective of a character who is emotionally and/or mentally challenged.

This way, commonplace exploits are magnified to the proportions of Mount Everest.

I'm seeking a shorter term to name this genre so that maybe I'll be given official credit.

"The Pleasure of My Company" falls into this category, but it also rises above it despite its brevity.

The book is not a single word longer than necessary yet manages to bring out an impressive number of smiles and chuckles.

Then it closes with a flourish that tugs at the heart.

Steven Martin is truly a fine writer.

Go figure.

Another Steve Martin book, and once again, I found myself closing the book with tears in my eyes.

His works are not just humorous; they are beautifully insightful and filled with charming characters who are so well-written that you can't help but root for them.

I believe what makes Steve Martin a great writer is the same quality that makes him a great actor. He has an uncanny ability to put himself in someone else's shoes, to understand their dreams, hangups, and thought processes. This was evident in "Shopgirl" and "An Object of Beauty," and it's no different in this novella.

The main character, Daniel, suffers from OCD, and Martin's portrayal of it is so accurate that I had to wonder if he has personal experience with the condition or knows someone who does. Daniel's OCD is similar to mine: counting and issues with stepping "correctly." It's not the typical hand-washing and cleanliness stereotype that people often associate with OCD.

Like me, Daniel is an extreme overthinker. His racing mind manifests as math and a compulsion to make things harder for himself. Martin's description of Daniel's inner turmoil is so vivid that it's almost palpable.

But Martin doesn't just focus on the negative aspects of OCD. He also shows the little idiosyncrasies in how different people think, like in his description of Daniel's therapist, Clarissa.

Every character in this book is interesting and real, but I especially loved the journey of Daniel and Clarissa's relationship. Daniel is a deeply loving man, and his need to love drives him to observe and find things to love in others.

The book also explores the universality of wanting to love but being inhibited by fear. Martin expresses this beautifully, and it's a theme that many of us can relate to.

In the end, I was overjoyed to read that Daniel had a happy ending. His story shows that even with our flaws and fears, we can still find love and happiness in this world.

I truly and deeply love this book.

Every time I pick it up, it has the power to make me giggle uncontrollably. The humor and wit within its pages are simply infectious.

Not only that, but it also makes me feel an overwhelming sense of protectiveness and kindness. It's as if the characters and the story have a special charm that tugs at my heartstrings and makes me want to shield them from any harm.

Moreover, this book makes me wonder about all the different ways in which I'm crazy. There are so many aspects of my personality and behavior that I start to question and reflect upon while reading it. It's like a mirror that shows me both the silly and the serious sides of myself.

In conclusion, this book is not just a source of entertainment for me; it's a journey of self-discovery and a reminder of the many wonderful emotions that literature can evoke.

The book jacket presents the main character as a "modern-day neurotic yearning to break free." Initially, when I started reading about his numerous neuroses, I wasn't overly excited. However, as I delved deeper into the story, Daniel Pecan Cambridge began to grow on me. I fell in love with Shopgirl almost immediately, but my affection for Martin's second novel developed gradually as I read more of it. My attachment to it reached a crescendo precisely when I read the last page. (Damn!)

Moreover, this book made me reflect on the subtle barriers I erect to avoid doing the things I truly desire but don't. I'm aware that I'll be content after engaging in those activities, yet I still shy away from them. All those nights I squander watching mindless television shows instead of making a decision about how to utilize my time productively. All those mornings I repeatedly hit the snooze button ten times rather than waking up promptly and having the time to write. All those occasions when I fabricate excuses for not being able to exercise rather than simply doing it and feeling good about myself. This book compelled me to wonder: What exactly am I afraid of?

I absolutely adored this book. In fact, I loved it even more than Martin's first novel, Shopgirl. I'm quite certain that he is a genius.

The narrator, Daniel, is burdened with anxieties and compulsive behaviors that are utterly absurd. He possesses numerous unlikable qualities. However, he is also kind-hearted, witty, and hopeful. Martin does an outstanding job of humanizing him. By the end, I found myself empathizing with all of his eccentricities.

I really liked the fact that the world in the book was so minuscule, rarely extending beyond Daniel's apartment. Small things took on monumental significance. It is an extremely well-written book, and I relished every single minute of reading it.

Martin's ability to create such a complex and engaging character in Daniel, and to build a world that feels both intimate and profound, is truly remarkable. This book is a must-read for anyone who enjoys character-driven stories with a touch of the absurd.

Daniel Pecan Cambridge exists in a prison of disorder. His life in Santa Monica is highly structured. He must find a way to the Rite Aid without stepping off a curb. Mentally, he can't hold a job like he once had at Hewlett Packard. He can't use public transportation unless he can draw lines between passengers based on the plaids and stripes they wear. He prioritizes his mail into three piles, savoring letters from his grandmother in Texas as if they are the middle part of an Oreo.

When Steve Martin's novella "The Pleasure of My Company" begins, he has been cleared of murder charges and has befriended his neighbor Philipa, an actress who doesn't know he is slipping her Qualudes. He is regularly visited by an interning psychology student named Clarissa, to whom he lies about his life. He has a crush on Elizabeth, the real estate agent trying to fill some apartments down the street.

A reader might go through these stages in the early parts of Martin's second foray into fiction: 1) Ha! That Steve Martin. This is hilarious! 2) Oh my. Should I be laughing at a character with such a debilitating case of OCD and a touch of Asperger Syndrome? 3) Oh my aching heart!

This list of funny compulsions is all fun and games until Daniel gets a letter from his grandmother in Texas, his benefactor. He prefers her when she isn't sending him checks, even though he needs them. Then everything shifts when you realize he isn't just pure, neurotic comedy. He's a being with feelings trapped by things like curbs, light bulb wattage, and expressing emotions.

"The irony is that the one person who gives me money is the one person I wish I could hand the check back to and say no, only joy can pass between you and me. I found it difficult to write back. But I did, stingy with loving words because they didn't come out of me easily. I hoped she could read between the lines."

Daniel's life changes when he is invited by Philipa's boyfriend Brian to go for a run and realizes he can soar over curbs by following Brian. It also changes when he enters an essay contest in search of the most average American and starts to learn more about Clarissa and the complexity of her life with a child and a hostile ex.

This is a pleasant little story. Nice, funny, and easy. It wraps up tightly like a burrito. It has taken reading three books by Steve Martin to understand that he will never do anything super terrible to his characters. This is both frustrating and alleviates a lot of the stress of reading and worrying about characters. Even the obsessive-compulsive gets a break when he takes up with a girlfriend who categorizes his ticks. Steve Martin's novels won't break your heart or make your pulse race. They are simple stories with likable characters whose stories end nicely without a mess.

I'll do my best not to compare or contrast this with Shopgirl since, for the most part, both books are completely different animals. Even though, like with Shopgirl, at times I was either very frustrated or very surprised by what I was reading.

Daniel, the character whose head the reader is in, is slightly off from normal, to put it in a nice way. One of the biggest frustrations for me in the book, however, was that it's not really clear why this is the case. I mean, we know it has to do with his father pretty much disowning him at a young age, but too much is left open to feel like I really understood Daniel at all.

Another thing that frustrated me was that, at the end, it just seemed too easy for Daniel to become mostly normal again. In reality, it typically takes psychiatric assistance and regulated medication for someone to undergo such a dramatic lifestyle change as Daniel experiences simply by hanging out with a kid at Rite Aid near the end of the book.

But, to be fair, I did find myself about mid-way through the book wondering how everything would turn out and hoping that things would get straightened out for all of the characters we meet in the book. I wish that I had found out if some of the characters had managed to stay together, find who or what they were looking for, or had managed to find a balance between the chaos and normalcy they experienced daily because all we get is how things end for Daniel (who gets what he wants in an unexpected way).

Martin's humor, for me, tends to be hit-and-miss generally, and that carries over in this book as well. It seems like he paid too much attention to making his sentences witty and going for the funny when it would have been a better choice to drop the good lines and choose something more poignant to say instead. (This probably is why it took me half the book to get interested in the characters in the first place.) Also, I'm not sure that all of the characters that could have been more fully developed actually were, and the ending was rushed so much that I felt like I was driving in a NASCAR race for the last forty or so pages.

I did find Daniel's obsession with mathematical precision almost on par with that of the child narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but I think, at times, it was a little overdone. Again, I was sometimes more interested in the peripheral characters than I was in Daniel, so his obsessions got distracting and clumpy at times, especially at the beginning of the book.

Eventually this got interesting but, for the most part, I think the book overall needed more character development to be something close to plausible. I liked the idea of a character striving for normalcy when most books have characters in search of the opposite but I'm not sure this was completely successful in describing that movement from borderline insanity to what Daniel wanted all along.

This book is truly remarkable in some extremely intelligent ways. It demands that you endure a considerable amount of discomfort. However, it is also hilariously funny in that absurdist style characteristic of Steve Martin. (The man is indeed a true Renaissance man.)

I found the conclusion of this story to be quite satisfying. In fact, I am still astonished by the way it arrived at that ending. The author has managed to create a narrative that keeps you on the edge of your seat, constantly challenging your expectations and making you question what you think you know.

The use of humor in the face of discomfort adds an interesting layer to the story, making it both engaging and thought-provoking. It's not often that a book can make you laugh while also making you feel a bit uneasy. Overall, this is a book that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a unique and unforgettable reading experience.