A fascinating thing to behold: literary criticism that's deeply personal, hysterically funny and starkly honest in addition to being scholarly and trenchant. --Washington Post Witty . . . Hallman is a talented writer . . . B & Me is a wide-ranging and idiosyncratic career survey for Nicholson Baker's work, a love letter to the act of reading, and a commentary on the modern novel. It's difficult to do Hallman's work justice, but this is a book that readers will absolutely adore. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) J. C. Hallman's B & Me is a daring book. Its ostensible subject is the virtuosic and uncategorizable writer Nicholson Baker, but Hallman, borrowing a page from Baker's book on John Updike, U and I, transforms appreciation into autobiography. The fact that Baker has already played this trick only raises the stakes for Hallman: what can he say about Baker that Baker hasn't said about Updike? But the fact of the matter is that Hallman pulls it off. He reads Baker brilliantly and compellingly, and at the same time, he tells a moving personal story, about love and fame, envy and admiration, which says as much about what it's like to be a writer now as U and I ever said about the writing world of the 1970s and '80s. --Paul La Farge J. C. Hallman has written his best, funniest, and riskiest book, one that flirts deliciously at the edge of obnoxiousness before darting off into deeper, sager truths. Every writer or would-be writer will find much to relish, wince at and identify with here. --Phillip Lopate A labyrinthine odyssey . . . B & Me is a great love letter to literature itself, and a reminder that the writer's job is to push further with each generation, to reorient our moral compass, and take back criticism from the critics. --World Literature Today A bright, funny, and expansive account of a rewarding and investigative personal journey. --Litkicks Incisive and chummily inviting . . . Hallman is concerned about all books and all reading . . . and some of his most passionate, insightful writing arises in sections where he considers the bigger picture. --Los Angeles Review of Books To say that B & Me is an odd book doesn't quite do the project justice. . . . As provocative as this material is, Hallman's inquiry has a deeper agenda. It's a love letter to the book as a physical object, a source of intellectual ardor, and a form of emotional salvation. --Salon Audacious . . . Hallman ranges deep and wide in this passionate . . . wildly intelligent, deeply personal, immoderate exploration of Nicholson Baker's entire oeuvre, reading in general, and the state of modern literature. --NPR