Meredith Monday Schwartz

And Sarah did what she does best.

She asks really interesting questions, but here she did that, but then she kind of just stepped back and let the two of them, who've written a few books together and are clearly really close friends, they kind of just jam in this interview that she does about writing this book, about their process together.

I was completely fascinated by that interview on Sarah's Bookshelves Live and immediately said, no, I'm reading this book next.

I was ready.

And the book delivers on a lot of fronts.

It grabs you immediately.

Again, that oral history multimedia format is one that I really, really like.

This one moves fast because of that.

The structure pulls you in and you just have to know more, know more, know more.

So I ended up giving this book only three stars, which for those who know my reading know that that's fairly low for me.

This is where this gets interesting and complicated for me.

And it's where Reader Know Thyself does its most important work.

Because most of the issues that I had with this book, almost all of them, were me issues, not the book.

And they would likely not be issues for many, many, many other readers.

But I have to be honest about it.

So the first stumbling block, again, this is a me thing.

This book has a ton of drug and alcohol use.

all the way through it it's not peripheral there's drug and alcohol abuse that are active abuse that are actively affecting these characters day-to-day lives and their ability to perform their work this is really triggering for me personally and also this is really accurate to what was happening in 1980s new york the book had to have like it had to be there right

So, you know, it had to be written this way.

It's not a flaw.