In the issue of The Stranger that disappears tomorrow, Tao Lin reviews his audience at a recent reading in Seattle. He doesn’t review the people in the crowd so much as defeat them.

Reading Lin’s audience review reminded me of all the other writers who’ve come through town on book tour and reviewed their audiences for The Stranger. Here, for your Tuesday-afternoon reading pleasure, are links to all the audience reviews we’ve ever run in the book section. Enjoy.

Jonathan Ames
“My mind, at times, was elsewhere. Where it was, exactly, I can’t tell you.”

Paul Collins
“I was asked a question of such penetrating impenetrability that, god help me, I could not have told you what it was even before the woman asking it was halfway through the aforesaid question. If it was indeed a question. Then again, I’m not sure she could have recalled it either, even as she was asking it.”

Charles D’Ambrosio
“I think I must turn into a character when I take to the podium, dumber than I am, stuttering and baffled, delivering a rough draft of myself. It’s like I go halfway back into the raw state of writing.”

Dave Eggers
“I’m sitting in some kind of cafe right now, on Pine Street (I think), watching Seattleians pass by, and I want to go out and grab each one and give them a very embarrassing sort of hug—the kind of hug that involves grunting and loud patting. Maybe I’m over-caffeinated. I have to be, since I didn’t sleep well last night, and woke up at 6:00 a.m., re-running the night in my head, again and again, like a teenager after a prom.”

James Frey
“From January to June of 1999, my residence was a hotel in Seattle. At the time, I was living and working in the film business in L.A., and I came to Seattle to produce a movie. I did not have a pleasant experience. It rained the first 86 days. I met a girl, fell quickly in love, and she immediately started cheating on me. My dog died. I cut my hand, my hand got infected, I got something called sausage finger, which, as you might guess, made my fingers look like sausages, and I ended up in the hospital for a week. I found out my closest friend was dying of AIDS. And the cherry on top of this big pile of shit was that the movie was an absolute disaster…”

John Hodgman
“Before our reading in Seattle, Jonathan Coulton and I were told to not expect too many laughs. ‘Seattle is an earnest city,’ our friends from Seattle told us as we all stood in the basement of Elliott Bay, a warm, windowless chamber lined with books, perfect for a reading or a bibliophilic ritual murder.”

Gary Lutz
“I arrived at the Pittsburgh International Airport seven hours in advance of my flight. I don’t know why, except that the most traumatic episode of my life had taken place in that airport 997 days earlier, when I had dropped somebody off who was leaving my life for good, and I’d never achieved closure, just various, ever-widening forms of aperture or emotional orificing. So maybe I just wanted to haunt the place retributively for a while. But the automatic doors that led from the long-term parking lot to the terminal wouldn’t even open for me—I tried three sets of them. The sensors, I guess, failed to detect sufficient bodily or characterical presence.”

Heather McHugh
“I make a quick sartorial scan: sweats and parkas, leather vests and lumber jackets; the temperature outside is 24 degrees F, and these guys have apparently just come in from a long day’s log-rolling.”

Ben Marcus
“Phrase used by most attractive person in attendance after having book signed: Rock on. What author failed to do for several days after the reading, and continues to fail to do: Rock on.”

Mattilda, AKA Matt Bernstein Sycamore
“In Seattle, at Bailey/Coy Books, there’s a sparrow trapped in the store and a baby crying, but the rest of the audience is quiet as snow.”

Neal Pollack
“Man, did I eat well on my book tour. The rest of it went something like this. Bookstore owner: ‘I think we’re in for a modest crowd tonight.’ Me: ‘What’s a modest crowd?’ Bookstore owner: ‘Single digits.’ Me: ‘Oh.’”

David Rakoff
“They all seemed very nice and receptive, except perhaps for one older fellow with silver hair and a sleek beard, who appeared to sit stone-faced throughout. ‘He hates me,’ I thought, which immediately led me to further think, ‘I love him.’ There is nothing like an open expression of contempt to blow right up my skirt.”

Vendela Vida
“The night before we drove up to Seattle, we read at Powell’s in Portland and went to see the Shins play afterwards. We are obsessed with the Shins. We listened to the Shins the entire drive from Portland to Seattle. But enough about the Shins. This is supposed to be a review of the audience…”

Sarah Vowell
“On the six-hour flight from LaGuardia to Sea-Tac, you would think I would be looking forward to my public radio interview, or dropping by the independent gem Elliott Bay Books to sign stock, or the aforementioned event on the University of Washington campus, where I would meet my readers. What I was actually wondering about was how much time I would have for lunch (12 whole minutes) and whether or not they still have those really good taco chips in the minibar of the Alexis Hotel I enjoyed on my previous book tour (yes, happily, they do).”

Sean Wilsey
“I told her I was a ‘memoirist,’ which is always a good way to assassinate a conversation.”