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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
I feel sad for this book. I liked it well enough. I am rating it what I would have rated it had it not followed The Goldfinch because that book has ruined me from loving anything else again. Everything seems like fluff and junk.
I did enjoy this book and would give it a 3.5 non post goldfinch.
I did enjoy this book and would give it a 3.5 non post goldfinch.
I did read this spaced out over a longer period of time than usual, but I found myself wanting more. Someone told me it was a true story, that Dave Eggers actually did this. Then I was confused/intrigued by Hand's "interruption" that it was all false. I love Dave Eggers and found the book recovered some towards the end with some great Eggers story telling, but mostly I just want to learn more about why he wrote the story and how he came up with the idea and I want Hand to finish the "interruption" with some type of epilogue...
I suppose I can see why many don't like Eggers' style, but I can't help it. This book - and his memoir before it - deal with loss in a way that I'm terribly familiar with but could never describe in five times as many pages. The language is over-saturated and intoxicating, even if it sometimes gets a little lost along the way. Minus one star for the occasional self-conversation that dragged on a page too long. Still not as trying as the self-aware talk with the reader from AHWSG, and overall less gimmicky. Still plenty quirky and well worth the read.
"If your house is haunted bring in your friends and start tearing the walls down."
"If your house is haunted bring in your friends and start tearing the walls down."
Highly entertaining, many points he brought up were something I thought no one else ever thought about. The ending left a little to be desired for me though.
I found this book to be stunning. I love its little twists on the basic novel with its photos and pauses and interior dialogues instead of monologues.
I felt the title's meaning in my bones. The book made me want to be able to do everything in the world at the same time starting right now. That's exactly the sort of velocity they're talking about.
I almost didn't believe that the novel covered only a week in time, but it does. It seems to cover so much more, so much farther into the future and into the past.
I applaud it.
I also very seriously recommend that you DO NOT READ IT IN PAPERBACK.
That sounds strange but its formatting is so different in hard cover, so much truer to its intent, that it will seriously affect the way you read it.
To give an example, in hard cover, the first sentence is written ON the cover. The book starts the second you pick it up. I can't imagine someone wanting to put it down.
I felt the title's meaning in my bones. The book made me want to be able to do everything in the world at the same time starting right now. That's exactly the sort of velocity they're talking about.
I almost didn't believe that the novel covered only a week in time, but it does. It seems to cover so much more, so much farther into the future and into the past.
I applaud it.
I also very seriously recommend that you DO NOT READ IT IN PAPERBACK.
That sounds strange but its formatting is so different in hard cover, so much truer to its intent, that it will seriously affect the way you read it.
To give an example, in hard cover, the first sentence is written ON the cover. The book starts the second you pick it up. I can't imagine someone wanting to put it down.
Pockets of good surrounded by a narrative that moaningly plods along. Less a feeling of velocity--more a feeling of exhaustion.