The NYTBR this week was low on the interesting and high on the boring. Indicative of this extreme dullness (which discernibly oozed through the pages of the Review) was Jonathan Rosen s opening line to his "John James Audubon" review: "Let s face it. Pictures of birds are boring." Are the editors actually TRYING to make us to go straight the Sunday Styles section? Actually, not exactly—we do get some "vaginal texture" action. Intern Alexis endures in our weekly feature.

How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) By Ann Coulter Reviewed by Liesl Schillinger

As much as we hate to admit it, the bulk of NYTBR readers don t have their fingers glued to the pulse of contemporary political miscellany. Therefore, we worry that many readers may not have fully understood Ms. Schillinger s repeated references to the Ann Coulter talking doll, which she starts and finishes the review discussing. According to my grandmother, just a sentence, explaining what this doll was, would have sufficed. In attempting to tie the review up in a neat little bow, Schillinger writes that she would like to see the Leisl doll, named for the eldest daughter of an Austrian family square off with the Coulter doll. Oy. Strained and a half!

Villages
 By John Updike
Reviewed by Walter Kirn

Walter Kirn is quite a brilliant critic, so we don t want to be too hard on him. However, we do take issue with his opening sentence in which he claims that, sex scenes in fiction are a problem. He goes on to say, Only the juvenile and the information-starved actively seek out such passages; the mature and the experienced regard them as unavoidable ordeals. First off, sex scenes in fiction aren t the problem — they re the solution. Secondly, our eyes sort of glazed over the whole review until we got to the parts when Kirn quoted from Updike s dirty passages ( a slit, a pumpkin-seed shape, curls and hair around and above it, and below it a dot ); so .Kirny, sounds like you re as juvenile and pervy as the rest of us. Whatever, Walter Kirn is awesome and we sort of flipped out when he dropped the phrase vaginal textures.

The Line of Beauty
 By Alan Hollingsworth
Reviewed by Anthony Quinn

There have been so few American reviews of this book, that the least the NYTBR editors could have done was to get an American take on Hollinghurst s hype hype hyped, Booker Prize winning novel. Aren t there any Americans out there who could have offered some insight into the world of young, gay, social climbers? Choire Sicha?!?! Anyway, the review was generally not that riveting, which is why the best pull quote the editors could come up with was As the boom of the 1980s unfold, Nick becomes deeply entwined with the world of money and privilege. Zzzzzz. They should have totally used Yet you have to wonder how the Master might have reacted to Nick s forthright notation of the heft and size of male genitalia, whether companionably spied over a lavatory stall or outline in a trouser fabric as a jutting bulge.

Best Sellers: We almost decided that we couldn t wait till November 3rd and that we were moving to Paris right now, when we saw that Anne Geddes and Celine Dion s Miracle, a celebration of new life which features over 80 photographs of babies, some of them with Celine Dion, was at the number 12 spot on the Non-fiction bestseller list.