It does sound a lot like Mr. Trillin:

Calvin Trillin composes poetry on deadline,
Drawing inspiration straight from a headline.
He likes to send up politicians in verse,
Chronicling follies that get worse and worse.

But the difficulty comes when Ms. Kakutani tries to be critical of the book. Her choice of form is a charmingly cute way to write about  a charmingly cute stocking stuffer of a book, but it invites the inevitable comparison between reviewer and author.

Poet Trillin has chronicled it all in this book,
Which you can read on paper, Kindle or Nook.
While he’s no Steve Sondheim, and has penned better books,
Rhyming on deadline isn’t as easy as it looks

Kakutani.

The history of Michiko Kakutani's affection for the word "limn" has been well-documented. Now Salon reports that after having given the word a rest for a while, the New York Times book critic has hinted at a possible comeback in last Sunday's Times book review of Amy Waldman's The Submission: "Ms. Waldman tends to favor sympathy over satire when it comes to limning her characters’ feelings and motivations."

But what about the book itself? The notoriously barb-tongued Michiko Kakutani, book critic for The New York Times, offered her take on the King of Hip-Hop's anecdotes and self-analysis. The verdict? It looks like she really liked it!

In the end, “Decoded” leaves the reader with a keen appreciation of how rap artists have worked myriad variations on a series of familiar themes (hustling, partying and “the most familiar subject in the history of rap — why I’m dope”) by putting a street twist on an arsenal of traditional literary devices (hyperbole, double entendres, puns, alliteration and allusions), and how the author himself magically stacks rhymes upon rhymes, mixing and matching metaphors even as he makes unexpected stream-of-consciousness leaps that rework old clichés and play clever aural jokes on the listener (“ruthless” and “roofless,” “tears” and “tiers,” “sense” and “since”).

High praise coming from Kakutani! The only true complaint from the critic was over the time spent annotating "a comical, party-down song like “Big Pimpin’.” However, the book provides a Kakutani with a crucial translation of the song's hook. "'Cheese' and 'cheddar,' the casual hip-hop tourist will learn, translate into'money,' the review explained. 

So Jay-Z isn't just a Camembert connoisseur? Who would have thought!

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

It didn't help that Mr. Rattner was ensnared in the billion-dollar New York State pension fund scandal. Those problems haven't gone away, in fact they only seem to have gotten worse, but Mr. Rattner's book is finished. And, according to an advance manuscript that was sent to the Observer this morning, it looks awfully interesting.

So far, this reporter has read just the opening and the finale, which, normally, is a terrible and book-ruining thing to do. It was excusable in this case, especially because of a three-page acknowledgement passage that is one of the all-time greats.

For starters, the book—whose cover features very serious expressions from Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and President Obama, but not our author—has an alluring table of contents. "Dead Man's Curve" is Chapter One, "Mr. Rattner Goes to Washington" is third, followed by "F**k the UAS," and later "Harry Wilson's War" and "The Chief Executive Shuffle" for the finale. There is a six-page character list, followed by a prologue that opens up with the image of Obama body man Reggie Love watching Tiger Woods in March 2009, who was "then still respectable and heroic." Was Mr. Rattner referring to himself metaphorically? Probably not.

The book, which was written with the help of a Fortune editor, a Team Auto colleague, a financial journalist and four others, begins with lovely turns of phrase. The Oval Office on weekends was filled with "T-shirts and jeans worn by unshaven, sockless men." The president "had the air of a man in the business of calmly executing." General Motors and Chrysler were being "fed intravenously" with cash. And Governor Jennifer Granholm's' voice "barely rose above a whisper," but "a chorus of anxious voices crackled through the speaker" during a conference call with senators.

The book, which comes out next month, and was sent without an embargo, is up to date. Mr. Rattner writes that he was disappointed with Ed Whitacre, who just announced he was stepping down, despite a promise "to see GM through its initial public offering." He is also annoyed that Dan Akerson will be both chairman and CEO, which means the roles won't be separated as he had hoped.

Still, working with "such a talented and collegial group of extraordinary individuals has been the high point of my career," he says. Geithner and Summers were "available, supportive, and decisive," and "servants of the highest order and integrity." And other government people? "Contrary to what some Americans may think," he writes, "the Treasury is blessed with a large array of talented and dedicated staff members."

He saves his best for a close friend. "I pay particular tribute to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who truly knows the meaning of loyalty and standing up for people you believe in." Despite Mr. Rattner's pension fund problems, Mr. Bloomberg has stuck by his side: "It’s certainly true he’s not moving away from Steve," a source told The Observer for the March story.

After that thank-you comes a glorious list of names "to whom I am equally grateful." In order of appearance, just a few of those names are The Times' Michiko Kakutani (he calls her Michi), Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, billionaire Barry Diller, Clinton adviser Vernon Jordon, JP Morgan's Jes Staley, billionaire Leon Black, Senator Chuck Schumer, billionaire David Rubenstein, Harvey Weinstein (thanked twice, actually), Bear Stearns' Warren Spector, billionaire Jerry Speyer, billionaire Mort Zuckerman, Barbara Walters, Lehman's Dick Fuld, The Times' Arthur Sulzberger, the Mets' Fred Wilpon, and Harvard's Skip Gates. He doesn't bother with the Henry Louis part.

"It is my personal opinion that yes, the Times favors white male authors.," Picoult told The NYTPicker. "That isn't to say someone else might get a good review -- only that if you are white and male and living in Brooklyn you have better odds, or so it seems."

NYTPicker went on to claim that Picoult "made it plain that her sensitivities derive from her own feelings of mistreatment by the NYT," but Picoult later refuted this. Addressing "those who actually care," Picoult posted the text of her email response to NYTPicker and said that in the interest of "truth in journalism" she wanted to point out that "nowhere in here do I criticize Ms. Kakutani, rant, or suggest that my comment (which really was just that -a COMMENT) was precipitated by the fact that I don't get rave reviews from the NYT." She was simply stating her opinion, wrote Picoult, "about those to whom the NYT chooses to devote inches of print!"

Picoult later added a coda, again via Twitter: "No sour grapes. I don't care if the NYT does or doesn't review me - but I'd love to see some new, unnoticed writers be lauded."

[Guardian]

The New York Times reported on the finalists here in a 400-word item that ran in the Arts section. In the case of several of the authors, it was the first time in years that their names had appeared there.

Which is to say that between the two of them, Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin, the Times' primary daily book critics, reviewed precisely two of the 20 books—Marilynne Robinson's Home and Jim Sheeler's Final Salute, respectively—that were up for NBAs this year.

Some caveats, to be fair: 1) 10 of those 20 were poetry and children's books, which never get reviewed in the daily, 2) all but two of the fiction and non-fiction finalists were reviewed in The Sunday Book Review, 3) Jane Mayer was reviewed in the daily by Jennifer Schuessler, and 4) though there was no review, Times culture reporter Patricia Cohen did write a feature about Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello (which won the non-fiction prize) that ran in the daily Arts section.

But, you know, still!

Katherin Bouton, who became the culture desk's books editor last month, declined to comment because she is too new on the job, and her predecessor, Rick Liman, did not return calls seeking comment.

The 1996 piece takes the form of an interview, wherein Mr. Garner asks himself 10 questions about the state of book reviewing. Number nine is "Should there be term limits for daily book critics?"

Mr. Garner's answer:

Ten years on, Mr. Garner denounced the piece in an e-mail to Media Mob.

"I wrote that article for Salon more than a decade ago, and its chest-thumping, know-it-all tone makes me cringe today," he wrote. "It's a piece that clings to me on Google like a vampire bat. Michiko Kakutani is an enormously talented literary critic, and I'm honored to be writing on the same culture pages. We don't agree about every book, but it would be very boring if we did."

He added: "Also, it was around the same time I was friendly with Bill Ayers."

Mr. Garner, whose prominent role at The Times' book blog Paper Cuts and his weekly column on the best-seller list made him better known than most of his colleagues at the NYTBR, said the paper's culture editor, Sam Sifton, was bringing him in as a replacement for William Grimes, the former food critic who moved to the obituaries desk several months ago.

Mr. Garner said that while he has "loved every minute" of his time at the NYTBR, he has been "yearning" to write reviews more regularly.

He was referring, of course, to Michiko Kakutani, who presumably got on Mr. Franzen's bad side with her brutal review of his recent memoir, The Discomfort Zone. In that review, Ms. Kakutani wrote: "there is something oddly preening about [Franzen's] self-inventory of sins, as though he actually reveled in being so disagreeable." Also: "Just why anyone would be interested in pages and pages about [Franzen's unhappy marriage] or the self-important and self-promoting contents of Mr. Franzen’s mind remains something of a mystery."

During the talk with Mr. Wood—described in the Harvard Crimson as a face-off between Mr. Franzen and one of his fiercest critics—the Corrections author is also quoted as saying" “The reviews tend to be repetitive and tend to be so filled with error that they’re kind of unbearable to read, even the nice ones .... The most upsetting thing nowadays is the feeling that there’s no one out there responding intelligently to the text .... So few people are actually doing serious criticism. It’s so snarky, it’s so ad hominum [sic], it’s so black and white.”