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3.58 AVERAGE
3.58 AVERAGE
Exceptional text. Deliciously self-referential (albeit equally self-reverential). I loved the fabricated interviews and asides that drew attention to memory's recreational re-creation of events.
I really enjoyed some parts of this, and at times laughed out loud, but the preface was right: some of the stuff about being 20-ish was skippable and drew away from the whole.
Read this book a decade too late. Seemed dated and gimmicky but I can see what the appeal was when it first came out.
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Loved this book. Eggers' style was so engaging, clever, smart, just a neat book to read. The story was interesting, but his way of writing it was what really caught me.
Okay, it was good, but I don't see what all the fuss was about. Must be that this one was written before it was cool to hate memoirs, but I doubt it.
heartbreakingly sad. wildly funny. genius. everyone must get their hands on this book.
This is such a conflicting book. Eggers is clearly very bright, very interesting, very creative, and he has some excellent thoughts about solipsism and metacognition and the artifice of the memoir construct. These ideas are good, great, pure potential. I love how he sometimes inserts his internal monologue into the mouths of other characters; it's brilliant and funny and weird and perfectly effective. I like how Eggers acknowledges that the whole hyper-self-awareness thing is a gimmick.
But the thing is, Dave, admitting that you're narcissistic and gimmicky does not make you less narcissistic or less gimmicky. Because the fact is , even though AHWOSG may be a memoir, it never rings true, it never says anything (or, much of anything at least) that hasn't been said before and in a way that doesn't make me spend the entire book considering putting it down and walking away. In short, AHWOSG is all gimmick. Nothing much happens in it at all after the death of Eggers's parents, and it devolves into pages and pages and pages of self-indulgent whining about...about what? His life is pretty good.
Some people love this book. I came into it ready to love it, and there are aspects of it that I really admire and think I can learn from. Most of it, though, leans toward the side of whiny crap. But, like, really interesting whiny crap.
But the thing is, Dave, admitting that you're narcissistic and gimmicky does not make you less narcissistic or less gimmicky. Because the fact is , even though AHWOSG may be a memoir, it never rings true, it never says anything (or, much of anything at least) that hasn't been said before and in a way that doesn't make me spend the entire book considering putting it down and walking away. In short, AHWOSG is all gimmick. Nothing much happens in it at all after the death of Eggers's parents, and it devolves into pages and pages and pages of self-indulgent whining about...about what? His life is pretty good.
Some people love this book. I came into it ready to love it, and there are aspects of it that I really admire and think I can learn from. Most of it, though, leans toward the side of whiny crap. But, like, really interesting whiny crap.
Loved the introduction/prologue, hated the rest. What an overwritten piece of poo.
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced