Play Book Tag discussion

I must say right off that I don’t especially like short stories, because I feel they usually don’t provide the scope for enough character development to suit me. But I like Amor Towles so much I decided to give these a try. He didn’t disappoint me – at least in the first half of the book. He made me feel I was in New York and knew it well (which I don’t at all!) with his detailed, entertaining descriptions. He managed to develop some characters that aroused strong emotions (that sanctimonious stockbroker!)
But the second half of the book is a novella called Eve in Hollywood. Eve is one of the characters from Rules of Civility (a five star read for me) and I imagine that the novella here may be made up of material that was cut from that book, although I could be wrong. I don’t think it stood too well on its own as a novella and I’m afraid I didn’t finish this part of the book.

So I’m not sure how to rate this. I’d give 5 stars to the stories in the first half, and would even re read them, but the second half was a DNF. Guess I’ll split it and give the book overall a 3. Meanwhile will wait impatiently for his next book. I think he is a superb writer.