Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.58 AVERAGE
3.58 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
If I had a choice I would give this star 2.5 stars because a fourth of it was insanely annoying to read, a fourth of it was quite interesting and the other half was the two mixed together.
I should have guessed from the title, but the self aggrandizing bit here just became a little too much for me. I really enjoyed the tragic yet dark humored opening and the short sighted but well meaning antics of the brothers, but the over all voice just started to wear me down.
I really liked Zeitoun but his autobiography was wordy and too eccentric for my taste. It was hard for me to get through this book.
I honestly don’t even know where to start with this review. My husband recommended this book to me about a year ago. We are both voracious readers and I can & have poured through an entire book in one sitting. This book bothered me on so many levels. This entire book was like one long run on sentence. I couldn’t deal with the stream of consciousness dialogs. It drove me insane. I put this book down several times and I forced myself to get to the end because I kept hoping that there will be some amazing ending. Nope. The only reason I rated this one star was because living in the Bay Area I enjoyed knowing the places the author describes in the book. Other than that, … I was over him and the blasted story by the 2nd chapter. It was truly painful to read. Multiple times I wanted to throw it across the room. My husband kept telling me to stop reading it but I feel like I can’t give a fair review of a book unless I’ve completed it. Complete rubbish. It took me 9 months to finish it. The author seems self -absorbed and self-important and I had a hard time just simply reading his writing. It felt like a verbal regurgitation on paper.
This book is cringily relatable.
His sensory descriptions of death and dying are so visceral and real — content warning I guess?
I know a lot of people think that his entitled 20-something admissions ruined the book, but to me it felt (slightly self-depricatingly) honest in a way that most of us would be too ashamed to commit to paper.
i.e. cringily relatable.
Shed a lot of tears while reading, think I’m glad I read it.
His sensory descriptions of death and dying are so visceral and real — content warning I guess?
I know a lot of people think that his entitled 20-something admissions ruined the book, but to me it felt (slightly self-depricatingly) honest in a way that most of us would be too ashamed to commit to paper.
i.e. cringily relatable.
Shed a lot of tears while reading, think I’m glad I read it.
So, yeah, the title is annoying. It's "po-mo." It's precious. The cool kids are apparently past this kind of hyper-self-aware earnestness, and it's not very hip to admit a liking for either Eggers or McSweeney's these days. But, but, but...this book changed my life. It changed the way I think about writing, about humor, about the essay as a form, about - yes, here I go - life. This book is sweet, hilarious, terribly sad, and ultimately hopeful without succumbing to gross sentiment or self-pity. Yeah, maybe some of the stylistic devices are a bit too "cute" in 2009, but I'm glad somebody's doing them - did them, made them the old standbys they are now. Experimentation, honesty, beauty. Yes, Dave Eggers - yes.