Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue
A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music

I've recently made a few wonderful trips to New York City, so was excited to find this book about gentrification in 1980’s NYC in the neighborhood book box. To be sure, it is an amusing read, and I learned much about the distinctions between various Latinx ethnicities, and how they stereotype and di......more

Not sure I would have approached this were it not for admiration for Kurlansky's non-fiction food/historical writing, but this is a charming novel with intriguing characters. Set in the just pre-gentrification East Village of the 1980s, the narrative gets most of its color from the contrasting ethnic......more

Boogaloo on Second Avenue by Mark Kurlansky At first I thought this would just be a fun read and it was, but so much more. Talk about a melting pot, this one melted and morphed, fused and fomented. The eighties weren't good times for NYC yet what a rich family life the Seltzers had. We should all liv......more

This book is a little chaotic narration wise, but I think the reason it’s done in this way is because there are so many different walks of life that that kurlansky writes about, it sort of adds to the flavor of the book. Overall, I really enjoyed reading it, but sometimes the narration came off as a......more