But Mr. Burroughs is at his best in this uneven collection with a piece about his secret heritage as a Vanderbilt.

"Stranger Than Fiction" is an uneven collection in which the author visibly struggles with the demands of journalistic assignments.

Last year our reviewer, Michael Gorra, found this to be an uneven collection but admired the "witty and resonant prose."

"How to Be Alone" is a captivating but uneven collection.

In his uneven collection of previously published pieces, he recalls encounters with the strange, the sublime and the haute, and the cultures that created them.

"Unsent Letters" is an uneven collection of memoirs masquerading as a collection of disconnected, satiric essays.

As the lacerating essays in this uneven but icily hilarious collection make clear, he is far better suited to stomping on Tokyo.

"Folklore" is a wildly uneven collection that aims high and gets there about half the time.

So begins the narrator in "Love Orange," one of 10 short stories in Olive Senior's remarkable, if uneven, collection.

This had led to uneven and sometimes inappropriate collections of resources.