Slate Diaries

Buy this eBook exclusively through MSN at 73% off! This special eBook includes three new pieces not found in previous eBook or print book editions. There is a new diary entry about the 2000 election as well as an introduction by Michael Kinsley, publisher of Slate. Plus you will find a piece by the Jodi Kantor, editor of The Slate Diaries.

Library Journal

The online magazine Slate.com has a daily diary section that features a different writer each week and allows readers to respond to each entry in a reader discussion forum. This book is an edited collection of the diary entries. Some of the writing here is excellent. Leslie Carr chronicles her days as a school nurse in Pennsylvania with accuracy and feeling, while Ira Glass, host of National Public Radio's This American Life, writes incisively about his attempt to pitch a TV version of his radio show to Hollywood executives. Other parts, however, are less intriguing because the diarists' entries were meant to be read in an interactive setting the day they were posted. When they are collected in book form, they lose the immediacy that they otherwise convey. Slate editor Michael Kinsley writes in the introduction that these entries are supposed to have "the special voice of e-mail, combining the spontaneity of talking with the reflectiveness of writing." But the spontaneity of talking is not always an admirable quality in a large volume of writing, and this book suffers from a tone that often sounds like casual chat. Recommended for larger public libraries where essay collections are popular.--Cheryl J. Van Til, Kent Dist. Lib., Grand Rapid, MI Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.