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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
If you like the kind of books with multiple intersecting story lines that weave all sorts of crazy things together from college student entitlement to video game addiction and child abandonment issues, step right up!
This book has all of that. A violin prodigy, a psychopath bully, a child abusing school administrator, hippie radicals and so much more.
There's definitely commentary on this dysfunctional world we find ourselves in an how we communicate and make our way through it.
The most interesting story thread for me was the one between the professor and his mother.
I was battling my way through this book for book club but is was a struggle because it is 752 pages...if you are counting. While some of the story threads were pretty good, other times I thought....what the heck is with all the tangents? Does this guy think he is Dickens and getting paid by the word or something? Over all, I think it would benefit from more aggressive editing myself.
I will say that there were a few quotes that really resonated with me and parts at the end that improved my feelings about the book. They were woven in so as not to be preachy--just true and wise parts of the book itself. Still, the beginning is slow and some of it was a slog for me. I appreciated the turn of hints of positivity after a lot of bleakness or sad depressing turns. I'm so glad I finished though, because there were some quote shaped rewards towards the end.
I'll just end by dropping them here......
"But Faye's opinion is that sometimes a crisis is not really a crisis at all--just a new beginning. Because one thing she's learned through all this is that if a new beginning is really new, it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid. If you're not afraid of it, then it's not real change. "
"Sometimes we're so wrapped up in our own story that we don't see how we're supporting characters in someone else's."
"....because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone's life, you will find something familiar. This is more work, of course, than believing they are enemies. Understanding is always harder than plain hatred. But it expands your life. You will feel less alone."
"Blaming his students for being uninspired was so much easier than doing the work required to inspire them."
This book has all of that. A violin prodigy, a psychopath bully, a child abusing school administrator, hippie radicals and so much more.
There's definitely commentary on this dysfunctional world we find ourselves in an how we communicate and make our way through it.
The most interesting story thread for me was the one between the professor and his mother.
I was battling my way through this book for book club but is was a struggle because it is 752 pages...if you are counting. While some of the story threads were pretty good, other times I thought....what the heck is with all the tangents? Does this guy think he is Dickens and getting paid by the word or something? Over all, I think it would benefit from more aggressive editing myself.
I will say that there were a few quotes that really resonated with me and parts at the end that improved my feelings about the book. They were woven in so as not to be preachy--just true and wise parts of the book itself. Still, the beginning is slow and some of it was a slog for me. I appreciated the turn of hints of positivity after a lot of bleakness or sad depressing turns. I'm so glad I finished though, because there were some quote shaped rewards towards the end.
I'll just end by dropping them here......
"But Faye's opinion is that sometimes a crisis is not really a crisis at all--just a new beginning. Because one thing she's learned through all this is that if a new beginning is really new, it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid. If you're not afraid of it, then it's not real change. "
"Sometimes we're so wrapped up in our own story that we don't see how we're supporting characters in someone else's."
"....because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone's life, you will find something familiar. This is more work, of course, than believing they are enemies. Understanding is always harder than plain hatred. But it expands your life. You will feel less alone."
"Blaming his students for being uninspired was so much easier than doing the work required to inspire them."
This book was hyped and so I forced myself to continue reading way beyond the point where I would normally have called it quits... hoping I would, after all, start liking it. However, for me this book feels a bit like a series of Christmas dinners: there's all kinds of good stuff but there's too much of everything, so eventually it all sits on your stomach and you get tired and you just want to lie down until you feel better again. I walked out of the 'Nix'-party after about 400 pages. Sure, there were parts I enjoyed, but I got to a point where I really could not care less about why Faye left or whether Samuel and Bethany become an item or whether Laura eventually gets busted for cheating in every class she takes. I just wanted to lie down and NOT read ANYTHING for a while - that's the effect this book had on me.
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
While the plot of this book was promising and the writing sometimes good it was overall a disappointment. The author clearly had a few big points he wanted to make about modern society and some characters seemed to exist only to make these points over and over again and again through both their actions as well as the narrator’s long musings. The relationship between the main character and his love interest was so sparse it was laughable that we were sold it as a lifelong connection. My best guess would be that they spent less than 24 hours together until the end of the book when they’re in their thirties and almost all of that was as 11 year olds. All in all this would have benefited from lots of editing and much more attention to the characters beings and relationships than to the authors gripes about modern living.
This story is a cautionary tale in high potential (everything conceit-wise that I should love!) that comes short on the execution — did the editor have an aneurysm (how many ceaseless repetitions)? why does Hill seem to get so damn high off his own supply re: voice? or is Samuel really that insufferable a writer at times, unable to find balance, the volume always at 11? (When the voice works, it’s absolute dynamite, especially satirizing Americana). The ultimate cost is that Hill loses the heart; it comes out in glimmers, and when it does, how the story pulsates! But when it’s lost, the book sinks into a mire of hundreds of pages of relative drudgery. At a phat 750, this could easily have been 200 pages thinner, and not only preserved the heart, but strengthened it — hell, cut 300, and add another 100 that are actually heart-centric, and you’ve got a masterpiece with the honed and harnessed version of Hill’s sometimes-incandescent polyphony of voices!
Lots of genuine laughs in this one, though. That cannot be denied. Guy Periwinkle is ripe for a Bob Odenkirk portrayal!
Not to mention, there were about a dozen similes starmarked as improbably brilliant bangers.
“This was the price of hope, he realized, this shattering disappointment.”
“Time heals many things because it sets us on trajectories that make the past seem impossible.”
“Sometimes what we avoid most is not pain but mystery.”
“The line for a McRib was quiet and solemn and twenty people deep.”
“It’s liberal tolerance meets dark ages denialism. It’s very hip right now.”
“We love people because they love us. It’s narcissistic. It’s best to be perfectly clear about this and not let abstractions like fate and destiny muddle the issue.”
“You’ve been carved out by the things that have happened to you. Like how the canyon can’t tell the river which way to shape it. It just allows itself to be cut.”
“Back home, life was like driving a road at sixty miles per hour, every little bump and texture flattened into an indistinguishable buzz. War is like stopping and feeling the road with bare fingers.”
“He’s doing an impression of a protest he saw on TV once, many years ago. He has sold out, just to a different set of symbols.”
Lots of genuine laughs in this one, though. That cannot be denied. Guy Periwinkle is ripe for a Bob Odenkirk portrayal!
Not to mention, there were about a dozen similes starmarked as improbably brilliant bangers.
“This was the price of hope, he realized, this shattering disappointment.”
“Time heals many things because it sets us on trajectories that make the past seem impossible.”
“Sometimes what we avoid most is not pain but mystery.”
“The line for a McRib was quiet and solemn and twenty people deep.”
“It’s liberal tolerance meets dark ages denialism. It’s very hip right now.”
“We love people because they love us. It’s narcissistic. It’s best to be perfectly clear about this and not let abstractions like fate and destiny muddle the issue.”
“You’ve been carved out by the things that have happened to you. Like how the canyon can’t tell the river which way to shape it. It just allows itself to be cut.”
“Back home, life was like driving a road at sixty miles per hour, every little bump and texture flattened into an indistinguishable buzz. War is like stopping and feeling the road with bare fingers.”
“He’s doing an impression of a protest he saw on TV once, many years ago. He has sold out, just to a different set of symbols.”
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There were some really good & compelling characters (bishop), but some were so developed and yet not equally important to the story. I'm still not sure exactly what the main point of the story was, even though it was explicitly laid out at the end. It was fairly entertaining tho