Blog-ish utterances of a community leader as transcribed by a delighted follower. Some wisdom here but the subject position is tiring. ( )

Annoyingly twee mini-essays from Canadian hipster and soi-disant social theorist Glouberman, as transcribed by n 1 writer Sheila Heti. It takes a while with this odd little book to penetrate its wide-eyed, slapdash nonstyle and to understand just how vacuous and self-absorbed its riffs on contemporary urban culture really are. Kind of like what you'd get if you cross-bred a stoner Malcolm Gladwell with Zooey Deschanel or Miranda July and raised them in Williamsburg. The horror. ( )

Don't pretend there is no Leader, essay # 6, is an excellent illumination of this common problem in many groups. ( )

The Chairs Are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman is a collection of performance art ramblings as transcribed by Sheila Heti.

This is one of those books that I read completely out of context. I chose it because I liked (and still do) the title and the cover art. The problem I had was in not knowing how to approach these short essays.

Some of the essays seemed to be rather scholarly looks at different aspects of culture and psychology with a semiotics bent. Others though came off as self absorbed ramblings.

In the end I decided to move onto other books in my to be read pile. While there were certainly essays I enjoyed (the titular one, the on on bar fights, and the one on how to stop smoking), there wasn't enough to keep me reading. ( )

like a blog as other reviewers suggested. not really very interesting. why did i finish it??? how did it get published????? ( )