anyway!!! what i really wanted to say is that i love this review! i love what you said about the parallelism of the two books, the structure was something that really grabbed me as i read it. i also love love love what you said about Nick forcing himself to learn how to be witty. That's something I've always thought--that there's something about Nick's wit that seems forced and pastede on yay--like he learned it all painstakingly from endless hours of watching tv and basically picking out the bad boy tropes on tv and learning his lines from them.