The Class, Welcome to Pawnee

My dad asked why I didn’t review the books I read on this thing, and I had no good answer.  So here we go!

The Class

My reading time is generally limited to whenever I’m eating by myself - lunchtimes, midnight snacks, and the like.  If I have something new to read, that’s when I do it.  If I’m between books, I turn to the volumes that have been on my bookshelf for years.  These are the books that have survived the cullings necessitated by the birth of my daughter and the need to make room for changing stations and art tables.  A lot of Tom Clancy, Star Wars novels, and war histories.  

There’s also Erich Segal’s Doctors, a mainstay since high school.  Super re-readable, and the last time I went through it, I thought I’d check out something else that he’s written.  (I’ve already read Love Story, which made me cry back in college.  Haven’t seen the movie.)  The Class is basically Doctors but with Harvard students, which sounded perfect.

It follows all the same beats as Doctors, but with no females in the main ensemble of characters.  (I think because Harvard didn’t have any female students in 1958.)  It’s engaging enough, and Segal does a nifty trick in making most of the chapters super short.  (Like three or four pages.)  So I was compelled to read “just one more chapter” over and over.  It’s like a gatcha game.  

I was nonplussed by every character’s inability to stay faithful to their wives.  It made it really hard to feel sympathy for any of them, despite the struggles that they each had to go through.  And the book somewhat arbitrarily ends with their 25-year reunion with a bit of a whimper.  

Not as good as Doctors, but not a waste of my time, either.  

Regret reading: No

Would read again: Yes

Would buy: No

Rating: Nice  

Welcome to Pawnee

Jim O’Heir, Jerry on Parks and Recreation, writes about his experience on the show.  Parks is one of my favorite tv shows ever, so this was an easy pickup from the library shelf.  (Shout out to libraries, it’s how I read most of my books.)

This is pretty run of the mill.  It doesn’t really add to my appreciation for the show; O’Heir loved his time there, everyone was a great big happy family, yadda yadda.  Which is great to hear, but I didn’t need to read a whole book to learn that.  

Regret reading: No

Would read again: No

Would buy: No

Rating: Fine