Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Spotted: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Where: Metro North Harlem Line
Who was reading? A woman in a narrow business suit sitting straight as a stick of charcoal. Her severe black bouffant resembled Darth Vader's helmet.
The cover font? Loving it.
It's a book about writing. Sort of like The Producers is a musical about making musicals (Actually, sort of like how most musicals seem to be about making musicals). 
But it's not just a book about writing. It's a book about newspapers, in this case an English-language rag out of Rome, that's put together by a rag-tag crew of lovably flawed journalists (as if that's even a career anymore). 
Which distinguishes it from the vast majority of books about writing/writers, in which the main character comes to the shocking realization that the thing they want to do with their life is write novels, and then in a wacky surprise twist, the reader discovers that the novel he or she has just completed was written by the protagonist. Didn't see that coming.
In a one-star review, Amazon reviewer "a person" demands to know: "What kind of person kills a dog when they lose their job?"
If that's not a selling point for the book... I don't know what is.

3 comments:

  1. That font seems to be Panhandler.

    http://typophile.com/node/73095

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Anonymous. I'll probably have to start using Panhandler for absolutely everything from now on.

    ReplyDelete