{"id":8272,"date":"2010-10-23T08:13:38","date_gmt":"2010-10-23T13:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=8272"},"modified":"2010-10-23T08:13:38","modified_gmt":"2010-10-23T13:13:38","slug":"book-report-you-look-nice-today-by-stanley-bing-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/23\/book-report-you-look-nice-today-by-stanley-bing-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>You Look Nice Today<\/i> by Stanley Bing (2003)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I read Bing&#8217;s earlier novel, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/09\/book-report-lloyd-what-happened-by-stanley-bing-1998\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lloyd What Happened<\/a><\/em>, in 2006.  Wow, what a different world that would have been.  It was one of the first books I read after my first son was born, so I no doubt read it while being on call early in the nights during that first week.  I was also an executive of sorts with an interactive marketing agency, so I could have been on my first step into the world where Stanley Bing&#8217;s characters live.  Except, f course, I never was one for that way of life.  Four years later, I&#8217;m in a different city and my life has slowed from a work-focus to a home-and-family-focus.<\/p>\n<p>This book focuses on the head of a corporate Quality program who has a great secretary whom he helps through some life crises and gives good reviews and raises to, but she goes a bit off her rocker and brings a sexual harassement lawsuit against him and the company.  This happens at the same time as a recession, so the man&#8217;s career ends pretty abruptly and under a cloud.<\/p>\n<p>Bing chooses an unreliable narrator, a first person account from someone familiar with the story but not the characters under scrutiny.  The narrator is a high level HR executive, friends with the eventual defendant, and a solid satirical corporate drone.  <\/p>\n<p>A very good book.  I picked this up <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/16\/good-book-hunting-october-16-2010\/\" target=\"_blank\">last week<\/a> and jumped right on it.  I could see why the Christian County Library thought this book was expendable; the last patron to check it out left her due date strip in it, and the book had sat on the shelf since 2006 without attention.  A shame.<\/p>\n<p><center><b>Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?lt1=_blank&#038;bc1=FFFFFF&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;t=stlbrianj-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;m=amazon&#038;f=ifr&#038;asins=1582342806\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I read Bing&#8217;s earlier novel, Lloyd What Happened, in 2006. Wow, what a different world that would have been. It was one of the first books I read after my first son was born, so I no doubt read it while being on call early in the nights during that first week. I was also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8272"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8274,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8272\/revisions\/8274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}