Bright Shiny Morning, by James Frey

My first book by Mr. Frey turned out to be a great read.  It was also a very different kind of book from what I'm accustomed to read given its frequent derailments into historical sidebars that arguably added to the whole experience.

The book starts out telling the stories of several different characters, all living in Los Angeles.  The author skips zestily from storyline to storyline while at the same time throwing in both tidbits from new characters' stories and trivia about the city itself, its inhabitants, its businesses, or whatever else he can think of.

While this may sound very confusing, I found all that extra stuff to be very interesting, even though some of the secondary characters' stories don't continue like the main ones, which can be frustrating as one would like to find out more about them.

The only negative comment I have about this book is that all those side tangents the author makes us take become more and more frequent in the second half of the book, rigth when we've become very familiar with the main characters and would like to read more about them.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I'm looking forward to reading something else by Frey, specifically, the notorious A Million Little Pieces.

Grade: 9