Bill Chaisson (Author of Of a Feather)

Bill Chaisson rated a book it was amazing The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I read this book for the first time many years ago and upon re-reading it was surprised at how much I had forgotten. Now I feel like reading both trilogies again. The identity of Dust and the nature of daemons is established in this first volume. Phi ...more
Jun 03, 2026 07:26AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson made a comment on Ian Rogers’s review of Shopgirl " It was a good movie too. "
May 21, 2026 12:18PM · see review
Bill Chaisson is currently reading Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Bill Chaisson is currently reading The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 20, 2026 10:40AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson rated a book really liked it Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People's Politician by Dan Chiasson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Bernie for Burlington has three themes. It is a memoir for Dan Chiasson, who grew up in Burlington, Vt.; a partial biography of Bernie Sanders, and a cultural history of the back-to-the-land, left-wing political movement that gave Sanders his start i ...more
May 20, 2026 03:15AM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Bernie for Burlington by Dan Chiasson. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Bernie for Burlington by Dan Chiasson <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson rated a book it was amazing Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I love New York for a lot of the same reasons Roz Chast does. Like her I am not from Manhattan, but I did get to live there, albeit briefly and during an ill-starred interval in its history. We were banished to Brooklyn for the duration of our sojour ...more
May 10, 2026 05:19AM · like · see review
Bill Chaisson rated a book really liked it Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
These two novellas are the last pieces of fiction that J.D. Salinger had published in the New Yorker and then collected and published in book form (in 1963). Both of them are narrated by Buddy Glass, but both are ostensibly about Seymour Glass. I say ...more
May 02, 2026 09:06AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour by J.D. Salinger. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour by J.D. Salinger <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson rated a book really liked it I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I could not resist looking at some of the other Goodreads reviews of this memoir. I felt like there was a generation gap between some readers and this very Baby Boom author. What he thinks of as "being a woman" is in part what the progressive members ...more
Apr 23, 2026 06:30PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sante. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sante <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson started reading Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People's Politician by Dan Chiasson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Apr 21, 2026 04:06AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Bernie for Burlington by Dan Chiasson. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Bernie for Burlington by Dan Chiasson <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson rated a book liked it The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes by Peter Matthiessen	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is the second non-fiction Peter Matthiessen book I have read, the other being The Snow Leopard. The earlier book was surprisingly gripping because Matthiessen was going through the loss of his second wife—from whom he was estranged—from cancer. ...more
Apr 21, 2026 04:02AM · like · see review

Bill Chaisson rated a book it was amazing

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)
by Philip Pullman

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I read this book for the first time many years ago and upon re-reading it was surprised at how much I had forgotten. Now I feel like reading both trilogies again.

The identity of Dust and the nature of daemons is established in this first volume. Phi ...more

Bill Chaisson made a comment on Ian Rogers’s review of Shopgirl

" It was a good movie too. "

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Sea Around Us
by Rachel Carson

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Bill Chaisson is currently reading

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)
by Philip Pullman

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Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People's Politician
by Dan Chiasson

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Bernie for Burlington has three themes. It is a memoir for Dan Chiasson, who grew up in Burlington, Vt.; a partial biography of Bernie Sanders, and a cultural history of the back-to-the-land, left-wing political movement that gave Sanders his start i ...more

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Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York
by Roz Chast

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I love New York for a lot of the same reasons Roz Chast does. Like her I am not from Manhattan, but I did get to live there, albeit briefly and during an ill-starred interval in its history. We were banished to Brooklyn for the duration of our sojour I love New York for a lot of the same reasons Roz Chast does. Like her I am not from Manhattan, but I did get to live there, albeit briefly and during an ill-starred interval in its history. We were banished to Brooklyn for the duration of our sojourn in the city, which is where Chast comes from. The idea that people from the outer boroughs do not live "in New York" is perhaps foreign to non-New Yorkers, but if you somehow missed those jokes in old Woody Allen movies, then just believe her: it's true. (For further proof: our current Queens-born-and-raised president tries way too hard to convince people he's a real New Yorker.)

This book is purportedly an expansion of a short guide Chast gave to her daughter, who was raised in the suburbs, on the occasion of her decision to attend college in the city. In spite of the joking tone, all the information on these 176 pages is actually quite useful. The whole business of how the streets and avenues are arranged and numbered is ground zero, so to speak, so she starts there, complete with the various idiosyncrasies like the very New Yorker question, "What's the cross street?"

Her chapter on "Walking Around" introduces you to the quotidian joys of wandering the streets. It isn't a tour of the overtly sublime beauty of Manhattan; leave that to the opening sequence in the eponymous film. Instead Chast focuses on the oddball storefronts, collections of standpipes, strange signs, and other evidence that New York is really a bunch of eccentric villages jammed onto a small, narrow island.

"The Subway" chapter will save out-of-towners a lot of time and anxiety. It includes some pro tips that will allow you get from point A to B with astonishingly quickly.

The whole book is full of this kind of insider content, but it is also a not-so-subtle attempt to explain New York to those who just don't understand its day-to-day appeal. It is a corrective text for everyone who thinks it is just a violent, crowded, dirty place full of lunatics and rude people. Chast accomplishes this through acute observation of home truths, quite gentle humor, and a mixture of almanac entries and personal anecdote, all conveyed through her scruffy, detailing illustrations.

If you enjoy her single panel cartoons in the New Yorker and are over-joyed whenever they print one of her multi-panel ones, then you will positively swoon to have a whole book to make your way through.

One of the things I love about Roz Chast's drawings is their combination of the realistic and the surrealistic. Most of her characters have bad hair, rumpled clothing, and practical accessories (just like most New Yorkers) but she doesn't hesitate to animate inanimate objects or even places or let animals talk. Chast's New York is also plainly multi-ethnic and includes a broad spectrum of social classes; she's inclusive without having an agenda about it. She is also perceptive about the difference between what people think and what they say.

Although Going Into Town is ostensibly a guide to those who are about to visit New York, it also serves as a heart-warming compendium for those who have—like Chast—once lived in the city but no longer do and miss it terribly. ...more

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Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour by J.D. Salinger

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
by J.D. Salinger

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These two novellas are the last pieces of fiction that J.D. Salinger had published in the New Yorker and then collected and published in book form (in 1963). Both of them are narrated by Buddy Glass, but both are ostensibly about Seymour Glass. I say These two novellas are the last pieces of fiction that J.D. Salinger had published in the New Yorker and then collected and published in book form (in 1963). Both of them are narrated by Buddy Glass, but both are ostensibly about Seymour Glass. I say ostensibly because, although Buddy very much wants to tell his readers about Seymour, he ends up telling them a lot more about himself. In fact, Salinger is at pains to mention several times in both works that Seymour and Buddy were often confused one for the other in various ways.

It has been said that Buddy is Salinger's alter ego, but another way of looking at his relationship with this fictional family is to think of all seven of the children as different aspects of Salinger. As with the Hindu deities, the Glass children can act as avatars of different parts of Salinger's personality. Like Walt Whitman, he contained multitudes. Whereas, Seymour seems to have been the person Salinger wished to be, Buddy was a lot closer to the person he actually was. Walt, the twin who was killed while a serving as a soldier and is described as the most light-hearted of the Glass children, may represent a tragic trajectory that did not happen to Salinger, but could have. His twin Waker was a Carthusian monk, withdrawn from the world. Again a possible path not taken. Even the sisters, Franny, an actor, and Boo Boo, a suburban housewife, represent lifes that Salinger may thought possible but did not end up living.

"Raise High the Roof Bean, Carpenters" is a fairly straight narrative tale in which Seymour does not appear but is very much the subject. Buddy attends his wedding, which the groom skips out of. Buddy ends up inviting a disgruntled matron of honor and her husband back to his (and Seymour's) apartment. Seymour has failed to show up for the wedding, leaving the bride distraught and matron of honor furious. Buddy's negotiation of this situation is funny but not particularly heroic.

"Seymour: An Introduction" is a different kettle of fish altogether. It takes the form of something of a metanarrative in which Buddy, 11 years after his brother's suicide, is attempting to eulogize Seymour, ahead of the possible publication of his brother's collected poems. It is in this novella that the confusion among the personalities of Buddy and Seymour Glass and J.D. Salinger become the most pronounced. For one thing, Buddy mentions several short stories "he" has published that are recognizable as Salinger stories. But the overweening characteristic of this "story" is Buddy's extreme inability to stop talking about himself as he tries to commemorate his brother. He does manage the latter, but is at one interval reduced to describing his brother's facial features one at a time.

In Salinger's earlier works, the stories are studded with delightful and acute observations about human nature, people's personalities, particular places, and the quality of consciousness. "Seymour" consists almost entirely of these observations, loosely structured around Buddy's reflexive description of the process of composing his eulogy. "Seymour" enjoyable to read because Salinger is both funny and melancholy, but there is a bitterness in the voice that is not present in the earlier stories. Buddy is 40 at the time of the writing, perhaps the oldest narrator in any Salinger story and the author seems to associate advancing age with disillusionment that is impossible to avoid. Although it is difficult to argue with, one can only take so much of it.

I have not read "Hapworth 16, 1924," which was published in the New Yorker in 1963 but never collected, but it is a similarly stream-of-consciousness work. "Hapworth" is a letter from camp written by a precociously intelligent seven-year-old Seymour. It was described as unreadable upon its publication. I have to wonder, is all that unpublished work by Salinger going to be like "Seymour" and "Hapworth 16"? I hope not. ...more

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I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition
by Lucy Sante

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I could not resist looking at some of the other Goodreads reviews of this memoir. I felt like there was a generation gap between some readers and this very Baby Boom author. What he thinks of as "being a woman" is in part what the progressive members I could not resist looking at some of the other Goodreads reviews of this memoir. I felt like there was a generation gap between some readers and this very Baby Boom author. What he thinks of as "being a woman" is in part what the progressive members of generation think or thought what it means to be female, which seemed to disappoint apparently younger readers But there was also a culture gap. Lucy Sante is a very New York person and she is New York in a rarefied way that she refuses to apologize for. Sante is a downtown New Yorker who was young and bohemian during a time and in a place many readers seem to no nothing about. If you don't like it, as they say in New York, go fuck yourself.

The structure of this book—which deterred some readers—is not the least bit confusing. Sante jumps back and forth between two stories, one begins with her decision to transition from male to female and the other is composed of salient vignettes about her youth. Both narratives move relentessly forward; there is very little jumping around in time. This book is filled with names, many times simply first names, like Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Darryl [Pinckney], and several are mentioned only once or a few times. This is not a story about the people Sante knew; it is his/her story and significantly about how she felt a certain unconquerable distance from everyone around her, nearly all the time.

Sante's parents' emigrated from Belgium with little Luc in tow three times. They were looking for economic stability and did so by trial and error. Sante has told this story in more detail in his Factory of Facts, which is what the title advertises: a very impersonal personal history. The past she passes through the same life history in I Heard Her Call My Name is still a bit cool for some readers' tastes (judging from several comments), but that is just their tough luck. Sante is a genuine intellectual and more than a little authentically alienated from what most people regard as normal life or normal emotions.

The problem with the book is that this alienation is not entirely due to gender dysphoria and I didn't think Sante truly teased apart the various causes for his nearly life-long, pre-"egg cracking" neuroses. In the end he simply states that solving the dysphoria through transition has made him the happiest he has ever felt, but he is still an atypical person, regardless of gender. His mother's rigid Catholicism and her imposition of it on both her husband and her son, seems to be the single most perverting force in young Luc/Lucy Sante's life. She had a peasant Catholic outlook that was entirely free of theology and overstuffed with judgments, condemnations, fears, and loathing. Because young Luc did not in the least share her outlook, she openly hated him. That's a pretty tough mother to grow up with, even without gender dysphoria.

In I Heard Her Call My Name Sante is much more candid about her own life than she was in the earlier memoir. Her teenage years are described as lonely and yet his stories are of parties, theatre productions, and literary pursuits. We hear much about her bad behavior through her twenties (drug use, petulant tantrums) and she is quite honest about how her low esteem hampered her personally and professionally at every turn. Although she never managed to finish college, she teaches writing at Bard and has a successful freelance writing career. Sante, in other words, managed to succeed in life while still being continually miserable. And now, she isn't. All I can say is "Brava" and "carry on." ...more

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Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People's Politician
by Dan Chiasson

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The Birds of Heaven by Peter Matthiessen

The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes
by Peter Matthiessen

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This is the second non-fiction Peter Matthiessen book I have read, the other being The Snow Leopard. The earlier book was surprisingly gripping because Matthiessen was going through the loss of his second wife—from whom he was estranged—from cancer. This is the second non-fiction Peter Matthiessen book I have read, the other being The Snow Leopard. The earlier book was surprisingly gripping because Matthiessen was going through the loss of his second wife—from whom he was estranged—from cancer. He accompanied a single biologist, George Schaller, throughout the book and never saw a single snow leopard.

The Birds of Heaven is a quite different book. It is assembled over many years from several magazine articles and other chapters written expressly for this collection. He travels around the world to see all 15 crane species and accompanies about 20 different biologists of several different nationalities. But the biggest difference between this and the earlier book is Matthiessen's outlook on life. Whereas in The Snow Leopard he was melancholy and intensely reflective, in The Birds of Heaven he is angry and disappointed at the state of the environment and with humanity in general. The Koreans come in for some of his snidest judgments, but the Chinese and Russians fare little better.

It was striking to me that the final two chapters on the sandhill and whooping crane, the only two North American species, are the most upbeat in tone and cleanly written. Although the whooping crane is by far the rarest crane species, the focused and successful conservation effort that has so far saved it is imbued with far more hope than the campaigns to save the Siberian, Japanese or white-naped cranes, all of which survive only in flocks in the low four figures.

Matthiessen can be a very lyrical writer and there are passages in this book that are quite beautiful, but more of it is weighed down by his invective against the greed and cruelty of his fellow human beings and he has a tendency to go on political rants that are quite esoteric, especially a quarter century after the book was published. Anyone who wishes to read a purely natural history book will be impatient with the diatribes about foolish land-use practices and boondoogle dam or drainage projects in desperately poor regions of Asia and Africa.

However, those who share his feelings will be glad to have someone as eloquent and magisterial put them into words and really let the idiots have it. George Archibald, the head of the International Crane Foundation, is a constant thread through the book and comes off as a reasonable man. His job is to win friends and influence people and he seems to be good at it. Matthiessen simply seems to see himself as having a quite different job: he is outraged and sad and he probably has a lot of company.

Twenty-five years later many of the cranes are still endangered, some more so. Most of it is due to habitat loss. Several are specialized birds that require specific habitats. The Florida population that Matthiessen expressed so much hope for in the final chapter does not seem to be viable. It is slowly dying out since captive-raised birds stopped being introduced. The common crane of Eurasia and the sandhill crane of North America, however, are widespread birds with catholic tastes seem to be increasing their numbers.

Matthiessen himself was part of a relict population, an haute bourgeois WASP, who attended Hotchkiss and Yale and worked for the CIA, he was part of a hegemony that he rebelled against but never really deserted. He lived in a narrow world of spartan world travel with a home base in the Hamptons. He resembled a white-naped crane much more than he did a common crane and his sympathies in The Birds of Heaven are clear. ...more

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