Word: staid
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...reader leaves The Midden with images of a large, wheezing Rottweiler, subdued after an unfortunate encounter with a falling human body, of a startled sheep sent flying by a hallucinating young man on a motorcycle and of a normally staid judge shocked into submission by a strong-willed woman in "what looked like an old tweed skirt with a stain on it. And a scruffy anorak." These images, often skillfully presented and very funny, make the novel worth reading...
...fumble-thumbed approach to grand larceny is that of a tax accountant trying to bolt together a backyard barbecue. The unstated, slyly effective joke of the Dortmunder series (The Hot Rock; What's the Worst That Could Happen?) is that everyone in the hero's extensive social set is staid, sober, contented, BarcaLounger middle-class and thoroughly crooked...
Though it doesn't quite match Ang Lee's wonderful gift for rendering social conventions hilarious, "Shall We Dance?" is bound to tickle the most staid viewer. It makes abundant, admittedly effective use of stock comic devices and characters. Eriko Watanabe cuts a droll figure as the experienced but caustic and somewhat unattractive dancer whom Sugiyama agrees to partner in an amateur competition; Naoto Takenaka hams it up as a painfully self-conscious colleague who dons a wig and hurls himself with fiendish gusto into the rhumba; Sugiyama's two fellow dance-pupils--one short and hyper...
...proverbial best and worst of times. The best included the freedom that being a Harvard undergraduate offered--reasonable housing, relatively accessible professors and tutors, all within close range of greater Boston and its attractions. Harvard Square transformed its staid self into a virtual carnival of hippies, druggies, politicos, panhandlers and townies curious to watch...
Finally, Jones' selection represents a fine complement to the choice of of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright for the traditionally staid Commencement address, which will take place the day following Jones' Class Day oration...