um well. so the first novella here is the one i read before and i remember not liking it all that well but having a book group discussion about it that gave me a better appreciation. now it's maybe 16 years later and i'm trying again and even with some of that old commentary in my head i like this even less than before. it's also a bit colored, i'm sure, by how much i hated the second novella in this book, but still.

so: miss lonelyhearts is a concept that i really do love actually. the idea of an advice column being started as sort of a fun, let's humor the ladies and give them something to read in the paper (this was first published in 1933) and how the man writing the advice starts to see how truly hard the lives of these women are, and how he can't help them even when he tries. it says something really important about society but i didn't care at all for the execution. (still, 1.75 stars)

a cool million: i know that satires aren't generally for me and almost always miss their mark where i'm concerned, and this was no different. i didn't realize going in that it was a satire and so at first i thought it was just a bit farcical (although not my thing) and threw sexual violence around quite casually (racism too!) but it got more and more extreme and more and more racist and i got more and more annoyed and i was so turned off by it that i can't even say for sure what the point was. (but i am pretty sure that i'd agree with it.) (.5 star) ( )

Unfinished - both stories quite unengaging. Perhaps they are satires on things already discredited, or just too cool in tone. ( )