I must conclude, therefore, that although many bookshelves are filled with volumes (read or unread) to display their owner's intellect, status or breeding, that most important of all human traits — honest self-awareness — continues to be guarded.
Some distortion comes through once you get past a certain point – about 23-25 on the volume reading.
Like the best books of literary letters, this volume reads like brisk, epistolary biography.
A lot of the time the new volume reads as nothing less than an apologia for the first.
Despite heavy editing (the manuscript weighs in at about two million words), this first volume reads like a manual for self-dissection: nothing is suppressed, everything exposed.
Conceived as a justification, billed as a felicitous accident, advertised in the author's own words, the volume read as a full-throated apologia.
Initially, this volume reads less like a book than a good book proposal, authoritative but self-conscious, switching restlessly between past and present, scene-setting and summary, energetic promotion of the topic at hand and world-weary commentary on rival Detroit portraits.
The mastery Prince achieved and the thrilling variety of his modes and voices means that, with the exception of the self-consciously minor late work (Prince labelled it "Senilia"), this volume reads like the highlights of a more copious body of work.
Much of the volume reads like a series of summaries of — and commentaries on — other people's books, including much-discussed ones like Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" and Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," and lesser known ones like "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy" by William Appleman Williams.
Further, the scenario never paid any attention to Mercury, the longtime partner in most Lincoln dealerships and, in fact, a huge volume (read profit) source for such dealers.
