up in the old hotel

i just started reading up in the old hotel by joseph mitchell, a book i got for christmas from some friends here in madrid with good taste in books and, while i just begun, am really enjoying it.

here's a snippet from the intro that might peak your interest:

"Joseph Mitchell trained at newspapers that are now extinct in a city that is forever lost. In October 1929, just as the Great Depression struck, Mitchell left his home in North Carolina and arrived at Pennsylvania Station. He was twenty-one. He quickly made a name for himself in New York as a reporter at the Morning World, The Herald Tribune, and The World-Telegram. As a feature writer, police reporter, and rewrite man, he covered the Lindbergh kidnapping trial and countless fires and murders. He interviewed flea-circus operators, Central Park cave dwellers, oystermen, ship captains, fan dancers, Clara Bow, Fats Waller, Albert Einstein, and "the Queen of the Nudists,"... Mitchell possessed a gift for human and reportorial listening - a natural sympathy - equal to his gift for prose. "Ear benders" he called his favorite subjects..."

Up In The Old Hotel is a compilation of 4 of his books. The back of it says, "These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) make up an indelible portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens - as depicted by on of the great writers of this or any other time."

Again, I just started it and thus far am really enjoying it, but to give you a real opinion I should likely wait until I actually finish it. So, stay tuned (although again I tend to write these things when I start a book)... but it seems like it should be a good one.