The Tuxedo Society by Paul Rudnick
Whoa, what a silly, goofy time. Absolutely the definition of camp. Immediately, you can tell that this book is not to be taken seriously and is intended to be incredibly cheesy. But also, aren’t all spy films incredibly cheesy? It’s not typically my sort of genre, but the narrator did such a fabulous job that I had to keep going!
The Tuxedo Society by Paul Rudnick, (List Price: $28, Atria Books, 9781668212615, May 2026)
Reviewed by Itzy, M. Judson, Booksellers in Greenvillel, SC
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“I think that we certainly talk about pregnancy and motherhood and reproductive freedoms. These are conversations that we are having, but within pretty narrow parameters. And what I liked about this idea was the opportunity to talk about some of those issues from a different lens than usual — not least because so many people’s minds are already made up about so many of these ideas, and that means that we can’t really have a conversation. But if we change the lens, if we change the approach, if we change the givens and the parameters that we go in with, then we get to have a conversation.
I hope I don’t give too much away, but I was quite inspired by Witness, with Harrison Ford amongst the Amish. I was really interested in this idea of a gangster amongst peacemakers, which is really what Witness is. I find that really fascinating. I became interested in Celtic Christianity because it was very revolutionary at the time in ways that we slightly forget. This was a world of utter warlordism, a very, very violent world and it was pagan. All of that was predicated on the idea that it was good to be strong and kill people. If gods were with you, that’s what would happen. If gods weren’t with you, you’d be weak. The idea of a religion that was founded on the idea that you might want to be weak, or you might want to be humble, was completely insane to these people. I mean, they looked at it and just went, “You’re mad! What are you talking about?”
I could spend years in a cookbook shop and never get bored. Where do I begin? I love the weirdness of cookbooks; how they capture the larger culture of a specific time-period and tell the tale through the prism of food. Take, for example, one of my cookbook treasures: The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook by Robin Leach. It’s a time capsule of the eighties — glass block, Dynasty-style hairdos, Brooke Shields — and the food is as awful as the fashion. Or another favorite: A Treasury of Great Recipes by Vincent and Mary Price, a collection of all the menus that the famous horror maestro and his wife collected over their world travels in the ‘40s and ‘50s and the meals that they hosted for their friends in their exquisite Hollywood home. If I could jump into the pages of a cookbook, it might be that one.
