I finished reading Side Effects by Woody Allen last night. Honestly, I have no memory of purchasing this book. I don't think I bought it in Austin (although maybe I did), so I must have moved it with me from Lincoln. I didn't have any real pressing interest in reading it, but I'd had it so long that I thought I'd give it a chance. This is Allen's third (and last) collection of essays/short stories. If you like lots of one liners (many of which made me giggle a little) strung into paragraphs in story-like form, mixed in with tons of references to existentialism, peppered with the names of philosophers you never read, and containing a healthy dose of everyone's favorite neurotic New York Jew making it with tall, beautiful, intelligent women, only to become dissatisfied with them and obsessed with a slightly different tall, beautiful, intelligent woman... Well, my God, if you wanted a book with all that stuff, I can't believe you haven't read this already.
There is one really good story in it, "Kugelmass Episode," where the main character wants to have an affair with no consequences and finds a guy who can magically put him into any book, wherein he can have an affair with a fictional character. He picks Madame Bovary, with hilarious results.
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