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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
the always entertaining genre of "new york was better when everyone was grotty and weird" + plot/narrative as relayed (idiosyncratically) by a visual thinker = an enjoyable reading experience
I didn't like this very much, the writing was good and some parts were OK, but it was just too disjointed, a bunch of little stories about neighbors and customers it was hard to identify with any of them. I finished it because it was so short but if it was any longer I'd have dropped it.
"Inside we are monsters and nothing brings that out faster than success."
"My father says it was because the Wolfawitzes stopped trying to accomplish anything. They just put a carrot in front of them and decided the carrot wasn't that important but chasing it was."
"A goal that isn't too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force. This driving force is a way to get around the fact that we will all die and there is no real point to life.
But with the ASG there is a point. It is not such an important point that you postpone joy to achieve it. It is just a decoy point that keeps you bobbing along, allowing you to find ecstasy in the small things, the unexpected, and the everyday."
"My father says it was because the Wolfawitzes stopped trying to accomplish anything. They just put a carrot in front of them and decided the carrot wasn't that important but chasing it was."
"A goal that isn't too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force. This driving force is a way to get around the fact that we will all die and there is no real point to life.
But with the ASG there is a point. It is not such an important point that you postpone joy to achieve it. It is just a decoy point that keeps you bobbing along, allowing you to find ecstasy in the small things, the unexpected, and the everyday."
"Inside we are monsters and nothing brings that out faster than success."
"My father says it was because the Wolfawitzes stopped trying to accomplish anything. They just put a carrot in front of them and decided the carrot wasn't that important but chasing it was."
"A goal that isn't too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force. This driving force is a way to get around the fact that we will all die and there is no real point to life.
But with the ASG there is a point. It is not such an important point that you postpone joy to achieve it. It is just a decoy point that keeps you bobbing along, allowing you to find ecstasy in the small things, the unexpected, and the everyday."
"My father says it was because the Wolfawitzes stopped trying to accomplish anything. They just put a carrot in front of them and decided the carrot wasn't that important but chasing it was."
"A goal that isn't too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force. This driving force is a way to get around the fact that we will all die and there is no real point to life.
But with the ASG there is a point. It is not such an important point that you postpone joy to achieve it. It is just a decoy point that keeps you bobbing along, allowing you to find ecstasy in the small things, the unexpected, and the everyday."
emotional
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
funny
reflective
fast-paced
someone else described this memoir as less like a book & more like sitting on a stoop sharing memories with an old friend. some stories are weird, some make you uncomfortable, but they all piece together to show the heart of a neighborhood that’s long changed.
There were some moments of this book that were great, like the titular "ASG". Shopsin is a great writer, and she had a lot to write about. An unconventional childhood, with an unconventional but loving and functional family. I like all those things.
I didn't love: The lack of narrative or linear timeline, because I don't want to work hard in my reading, and this is largely a memoir so, by it's nature, linear.
What made this tough for me, is that I just ... don't care about New York. She tells a charming story about how her parents are looking at buying a house four blocks from The Shop (capitals authors own), and two blocks from home can tell it's TOO FAR, and turn around without seeing the place. I fundamentally do not understand place in this way, and it made the book and the people in it, and the world they inhabit seem very small. Immediately after reading this I watched the movie In The Heights, which is also about people (the REAL New Yorkers) getting priced out of their part of New York, and how sad that is; and it just really cemented for me, that there is something there that New Yorkers get and I am not interested by.
Also: I read the ebook version of this, and the illustrations and photos were not legible- I think I might get the library copy just to see what I was missing.
I didn't love: The lack of narrative or linear timeline, because I don't want to work hard in my reading, and this is largely a memoir so, by it's nature, linear.
What made this tough for me, is that I just ... don't care about New York. She tells a charming story about how her parents are looking at buying a house four blocks from The Shop (capitals authors own), and two blocks from home can tell it's TOO FAR, and turn around without seeing the place. I fundamentally do not understand place in this way, and it made the book and the people in it, and the world they inhabit seem very small. Immediately after reading this I watched the movie In The Heights, which is also about people (the REAL New Yorkers) getting priced out of their part of New York, and how sad that is; and it just really cemented for me, that there is something there that New Yorkers get and I am not interested by.
Also: I read the ebook version of this, and the illustrations and photos were not legible- I think I might get the library copy just to see what I was missing.
funny
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
Episode of Sesame Street for Grown-ups. Series of eccentric characters and anecdotes and tidbits of wisdom. I have never lived in New York, but now I can long for the halcyon days of the Village just like a native!
Tamara Shopsin's Arbitrary Stupid Goal stands out for it's uniqueness. She grew up in a way that I secretly dreamed of while holed up in boring, beige, suburbia:
a) She grew up in The Village in NYC in the 70s/80s. We're almost the same age but, unfortunately for me, that's where the similarities end.
b) Her family owned a small grocery store, which they later turned into a small legendary restaurant. Both were referred to as "The Store".
c) Actual celebrities frequented her family's diner.
d) Her parents were super lax with rules. I think there was only one.
e) She had four other siblings.
f) The neighbourhood had many eccentric characters. There was always something interesting or unusual going on and someone interesting or unusual doing it.
This book is a collection of memories, most of which are about Willy (her father's unofficial mentor), the family businesses, and her family members (but mainly her parents).
Willy was one of the neighbourhood eccentric characters and a very close family friend who just had the most filthy mind, but always seemed to get away with his dirty old man lifestyle. He sounded very charming and magnetic, yet very dirty. He reminded me very much of Heather O'Neill's stories about her father's friends when she was growing up. Larger-than-life, unconventional, free-spirited, charismatic are all words that come to mind. But when he got old and started going senile, it was enough to break your heart.
The stories about the legendary family businesses were my favourite. You could just picture it all in perfect detail. The restaurant had hundreds of items on the menu since her dad, Kenny, was always experimenting. There were many rules at the restaurant. No ordering the same item as your neighbour. A standard response to a customer who said they were in a hurry? "Leave now - you'll be early." Restaurant reviews were banned. So were lots of people. In a world where business owners are falling over themselves trying to attract customers, her father would singlehandedly determine who he would allow to dine in their restaurant. There were many ways to fail at being a customer. There was lots of yelling from her dad (a brash, short-tempered chef) and lots of camaraderie from her mom (the happiest waitress ever who had an endearing habit of sliding into customers' booths to take their orders).
I found that other stories that form part of this collection just weren't quite as strong, though they were still good and definitely entertaining. I particularly liked the one about the crossword lady and if, for some reason, you have always wondered how to fold a napkin into a penis-with-balls sculpture, you can find a handy diagram on page 290.
Visually, the typography layout is unique and worth a mention. Most of the text doesn't fill the page. A paragraph or two may be on one page with a ton of white space below. The next paragraph will start on the following page. There are also a few diagrams and photos interspersed throughout. I still can't decide if this text formatting is cool or a bit try-hard. Basically, it reminds me of when you're in school and your teacher asks you to write ten pages, but you aren't quite sure how to fill that many pages, so you write in gigantic double-spaced loopy script to make it fill ten pages. However, if you had condensed it all down to normal size, you might actually have three pages of actual text. So, is this a 324-page book with really around 200 pages of text? Oh well. It's different and makes it easy to read, so I suppose I'm on board. It's just food for thought. Anyway, it's the substance of those words that really matters the most and there is certainly no lack of substance. And no lack of food for thought. Just lack of food for the poor disobedient customers of The Store.
Book cover review: 5/5 (I love peeking under dust jackets to see what, if anything, lies beneath. This half-jacket hybrid is unlike any I've seen before. So unique!)
a) She grew up in The Village in NYC in the 70s/80s. We're almost the same age but, unfortunately for me, that's where the similarities end.
b) Her family owned a small grocery store, which they later turned into a small legendary restaurant. Both were referred to as "The Store".
c) Actual celebrities frequented her family's diner.
d) Her parents were super lax with rules. I think there was only one.
e) She had four other siblings.
f) The neighbourhood had many eccentric characters. There was always something interesting or unusual going on and someone interesting or unusual doing it.
This book is a collection of memories, most of which are about Willy (her father's unofficial mentor), the family businesses, and her family members (but mainly her parents).
Willy was one of the neighbourhood eccentric characters and a very close family friend who just had the most filthy mind, but always seemed to get away with his dirty old man lifestyle. He sounded very charming and magnetic, yet very dirty. He reminded me very much of Heather O'Neill's stories about her father's friends when she was growing up. Larger-than-life, unconventional, free-spirited, charismatic are all words that come to mind. But when he got old and started going senile, it was enough to break your heart.
The stories about the legendary family businesses were my favourite. You could just picture it all in perfect detail. The restaurant had hundreds of items on the menu since her dad, Kenny, was always experimenting. There were many rules at the restaurant. No ordering the same item as your neighbour. A standard response to a customer who said they were in a hurry? "Leave now - you'll be early." Restaurant reviews were banned. So were lots of people. In a world where business owners are falling over themselves trying to attract customers, her father would singlehandedly determine who he would allow to dine in their restaurant. There were many ways to fail at being a customer. There was lots of yelling from her dad (a brash, short-tempered chef) and lots of camaraderie from her mom (the happiest waitress ever who had an endearing habit of sliding into customers' booths to take their orders).
I found that other stories that form part of this collection just weren't quite as strong, though they were still good and definitely entertaining. I particularly liked the one about the crossword lady and if, for some reason, you have always wondered how to fold a napkin into a penis-with-balls sculpture, you can find a handy diagram on page 290.
Visually, the typography layout is unique and worth a mention. Most of the text doesn't fill the page. A paragraph or two may be on one page with a ton of white space below. The next paragraph will start on the following page. There are also a few diagrams and photos interspersed throughout. I still can't decide if this text formatting is cool or a bit try-hard. Basically, it reminds me of when you're in school and your teacher asks you to write ten pages, but you aren't quite sure how to fill that many pages, so you write in gigantic double-spaced loopy script to make it fill ten pages. However, if you had condensed it all down to normal size, you might actually have three pages of actual text. So, is this a 324-page book with really around 200 pages of text? Oh well. It's different and makes it easy to read, so I suppose I'm on board. It's just food for thought. Anyway, it's the substance of those words that really matters the most and there is certainly no lack of substance. And no lack of food for thought. Just lack of food for the poor disobedient customers of The Store.
Book cover review: 5/5 (I love peeking under dust jackets to see what, if anything, lies beneath. This half-jacket hybrid is unlike any I've seen before. So unique!)