A Quick Tip by djevoke

The first book in the eight-novel series (eat your heart out Twilight!) is written in a fun, fast-paced style with an intermingling of some of the most interesting and well written characters in modern literature. Set in an apartment building on 28 Barbary Lane in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, this novel weaves the stories of the intriguing tenants in such a fun and addicting way, that you'll be hard pressed to put the book down.

The chapters are about three pages long, doing a fantastic job of sucking you in just to change the channel on you and then, three pages later, changing it back. This kept me on my toes and strangely enough, though it is fast-paced, you do get a good sense of each character- their flaws, their hopes, their mistakes, their stresses and their voices. It does a fantastic way of celebrating the diversity and intricacies of San Francisco's unique culture of the 70's and 80's. Starting as a serial in San Francisco Chronicle, it grew into a series of novels which started in 1978 and ended (?) in 2010.

I bought this at Citylights Bookstore in SF, after constantly forgetting that I wanted to read the series and found it fitting to buy it there. I just finished this today and ran out to my local library to see if they carried the next book, More Tales of the City. Luckily, for my addiction, they had it. I've never done that with any other book, at least not since I was a kid.