reading opinion

[waider]

This is actually in my regular hacker's diary, which is including more and more hack-free stuff as I get lazy about hacking on anything. We'll call that, um, need for a vacation, which I intend to rectify this month. Anyway. I've just finished reading Dave Egger's book, you know the one, and basically it was a bit of a grind. I found myself skipping bits to try and keep some sort of pace going, because he keeps going into these stream-of-conciousness spirals that do nothing to progress what bit of a story he's trying to tell, and it's Just Not Interesting. I used, as I have noted in my hacker's diary, write stuff like this in college as a sort of anti-depressant - writing down what I was thinking sometimes allowed me to clear my head, although some of the stuff makes for slightly scary reading at a later date because it seems like I was having quite a non-fun time. But anyway. To think that someone would actually get $$$ for putting that sort of nonsense in a book seems, to me, completely ridiculous. I have, as comparison, several books by Douglas Coupland, one of which I read as commute-to-pub fodder while Dave Egger's nonsense was on my bedside reading list. Coupland can evoke feelings and familiarity in me that Eggers seems to be trying for and failing to grasp. Eggers is jumping around saying "Look! Look! I'm like you! I'm part of your generation!" and Coupland is just sitting at the bar with a particular look in his eyes, on his face, that is recognisable and familiar and needs no further introduction.

The above paragraph is probably a good indication of why I'm not a book critic. I should really learn some basic style rules, or something. But I think you probably get my point anyway.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You should read my recent Coupland 'critique'... boy, if you find Coupland preferable to Eggers, i'd better stay away from Eggers. I might blow a gasket.