The collection includes mainly literary reviews of books that aroused particular interest among the reading public in 2005–2009. The peculiarity of these reviews is, first of all, that they represent the responses of the author - professional literary critic, poet and essayist Sergei Grechishkin (literary pseudonym Vas. Prigodich) (1948 - 2009) to the works of his contemporaries. The responses are examples of personal prose, which are invariably addressed to the “Distinguished Friend – the Reader”, who is involved “as an equal” in the life world of literary characters under the intelligent, ironic and always benevolent guidance of the author