Reviews and Comments

Well-written and funny, with a fair number of drug references, and recipes that look like they just might work, but one is a little reluctant to commit a lot of time to recipes from someone who proclaims herself to have both a primary and a backup dealer.

The bookstores really don’t know where to file this — some file it under Humor, some under Cooking, some just give up and stick it on a table in the middle of the store. During the book tour, Sedaris was at her most animated when railing against those who want to call it humor — she takes the recipe and entertaining bit very seriously, in an ironic sort of way, and she wants people to take her book seriously. It’s as if she truly believed she was the Betty Crocker for the new millennium, a burnt-out roach in the ashtray and a medicine cabinet full of Valium (and marbles).

A lot happens in "Lurking," but true to its title, the book mostly shines a light on what foul things other people are doing - and how one's odds of getting away with it depend on how much the man in the mirror looks like Zuck.

Ms. McNeil considers how social media have changed our behavior, first as offline interaction became normalized, and then as it has become weaponized.

Personal behavior is the focus here, so Google is mentioned only offhandedly. A leisurely defunct platform called Friendster opens the book, followed by crash courses in trolling on Twitter and 4chan and reverse-engineering what Facebook thinks you want.

Conversely, we hear about Wikipedia and successful efforts by the underrepresented to own and share their true stories.

But ultimately Ms. McNeil can't hold back: "...I have tried to maintain a consistent tone of criticism that is not openly combative... but I have found it next to impossible to maintain this distance when it comes to the topic of Facebook. I hate it. The company is one of the biggest mistakes in modern history, a digital cesspool that, while calamitous when it fails, is at its most dangerous when it works as intended."

I won't slice that as a quote post because it sounds shrill out of context. In context, it makes absolute sense.

At its best, this book is a fascinating flight through the skies of L.A. and scamper through the tunnels below, a cops-and-robbers tale that informs us of the tricks of both trades.

Dampening the action is that the author is as earnest as a puppy; whomever he's sitting next to is his best friend, whether that's a former burglar, a master lock picker, or the LAPD. He repeats police propaganda unflinchingly, but later carries lock picks and handcuffs into a bank and worries he may get caught with them.

We learn about capers through sewers, into rivers, underneath banks and slicing through museums. We meet a burglar who builds himself a Spider-Man themed hideout inside a Toys 'R Us.

In the end his in-laws are burglarized, and The Burglar falls from a perch of "master of misuse of the built environment" to lazy teenage punks.

The tales are thrilling, if you can jam your internal GPS and just go where he takes you.