An Example of a Negative Review that Makes Me Want to Read the Book

The Delighted States may or may not be a bad book--through the first half of his review Michael Dirda offers no quotes/examples to back up his claims, so I'm holding off on judgment. (Although the short excerpts in the latter half of the review are somewhat jejune.)And thus, I want the book. And I don't currently care if it may be eccentricity for its own sake. And I think Dirda's last sentence undercuts his previous assertions because it contains within it a kind of (unnecessary) final butterfly-wing-tearing destruction of the one thing that comes through mirror-clear from Dirda's review: the author of the book is, indeed, in a state of delight. To kill someone's delight in the real life that exists beyond a review tends to be a selfish act, saying much more about the killer than the one whose joy has been stolen. Here, it admittedly may be a public service, but we shall see...(I got this link from Matt Staggs' latest Linkosaurus.)