Friday, July 28, 2006

"A Year in Van Nuys" - Sandra Tsing Loh

Tsing Loh is a very funny writer and radio personality from southern California. I first heard her years ago on Market Place on public radio and was hooked. She writes very scathingly about the ridiculousness of much of modern mores, particularly the sort of elite snobbishness that tries to portray itself as simply an enlightened attitude towards parenting, social standing, education and the like.
The book is her take on the year surrounding her effort to break her writer's block and develop a tv pilot from a concept of hers. The insanity and inanity of dealing with the tv industry has been covered before but she has a degree of snarkiness and sheer unbelief that she's really being allowed to help steer the creation of a pilot that makes it seem fresh.
Along the way she also comments on her daily struggles with a musician husband who's forced to travel much of the time and a very successful and often overbearing older sister. Very funny stuff even if some of it feels like it's been done before.

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