If there is one blogger who is even worse at staying anonymous than I am, it's Jeremy Blachman, who was outed by the NYT in 2004 as the author of the blog Anonymous Lawyer. A book deal came next. Because I am important am cute flirted with Jeremy via email have a few hundred readers around these parts, Anonymous Lawyer, A Novel arrived at my house courtesy the U.S. Postal Service on Monday afternoon. By Tuesday night, I'd devoured it.

Conventional wisdom says to "write what you know." And if Jeremy Blachman knows this stuff, then I may urge my friends to rethink their Big Law jobs (I don't have one yet and probably never will, so I feel safe). While reading the book, I had to remind myself that this is fiction. But is it? I imagine that some of the emails that appear in the book are not much different from the real emails received by Blachman from real corporate lawyers who really feel like alll of this was real. And that's exactly what makes the book hard to put down.

Written in the form of the blog, complete with "#Posted by Anonymous at 9:22 AM" at the end of each "entry," A.L. himself is both maddening and endearing. While reading, I wanted to slug him every time he complained about his daughter's weight, and yet his relationship with his niece reminds the reader that A.L.'s not all that bad. Even if he is mean to paralegals. And secretaries. I found myself rooting for him and at the same time hoping he got what was coming. He's a seriously flawed protagonist, but perhaps that's part of his charm. I found myself liking who he liked and hating who he hated.

Most of the book is hilarious. If you read A.L. the blog, you'll be familiar with the style--the obsession with billable hours, the insensitivity towards associates, the contempt towards the support staff. I included one of my favorite parts (or at least one that doesn't give anything away).

The government has created a set of holidays without any legitimate significance at all--Memorial Day, Labor Day, Mother's Day--and a quarter of the people here think it's okay not to show up to work. They're lazy. I understand if an associate wants an hour off on Thanksgiving to go home and carve a turkey, or a few minutes to open the presents on Christmas. But what are people celebrating on Memorial Day, and why can't they do it at work? Wear a red, white, and blue tie if you have to. But clients don't ask less of us because there's no mail delivery. Our job is to be here for them, no matter when they need us. It's a service industry.

I'm more flexible than a lot of my colleagues. If someone's Jewish and wants to go to temple for Rosh Hashana, I'll happily schedule the meeting for between the services. If someone needs an hour to take his daughter for a pregnancy test, he can participate in the conference call by phone, that's fine. But I don't know why people insist on needing to take their wives out on the exact date of their anniversary. If she leaves you for something like that, you're probably better off.

Anyway, book reviews aren't really my cup of tea. As you can probably tell from this one, I've never written a proper book review before. I usually always leave stuff like this for the people who are good at it (and who get paid to do it). This post is also void of my usual silliness, so I feel the need to wrap it up. I do urge you to buy the book, though (I think it comes out in late July). Amazon's got it discounted (see the link above), and it's certainly worth the price. It's like the book One L, only funnier, less pretentious, and fictional. Okay, so it's not like One L at all except that both books were written by Harvard Law graduates. This one's better. I laughed. A lot. Don't let the fact that it's law-related keep you from reading it. Oh, and our very own Wings&Vodka is named in the acknowledgments. I, however, am not. *sigh* Guess I'm not important after all. ;)