Ho sentimenti contrastanti riguardo questo libro. Ad un primo impatto (soprattutto nella prima metà) mi è piaciuto molto: la malattia dei genitori, della madre in particolare, viene raccontata con un’onestà senza fronzoli ed un’emotività davvero coinvolgente. Eggers ci trascina nel suo mondo fatto di dolore e incredulità, che cerca sempre di stemperare con una sorta di ironia autocompiacente (che, al contrario di molte recensioni in cui mi sono imbattuta, non mi ha dato particolarmente fastidio, semplicemente perché si nota che il suo smisurato ego è un semplice scudo difensivo per sé e suo fratello minore Toph). I suoi dilemmi tra il non voler rinunciare a vivere la sua vita da ventiduenne e il voler essere già adulto per offrire un modello di riferimento al fratello (ricordiamo che Toph ha 11 anni…) sono i protagonisti di molti degli episodi che qui ci racconta; e lo fa bene! Mi ci sono ritrovata in tanti pensieri e moltissime paure che condivide riguardo alla perdita di un genitore. Ho apprezzato tanto anche alcuni passaggi dove, anche se per poco, seppelliva le maschere d’ironia e si lasciava andare a parole tormentate riguardo al lutto e a ciò che ne consegue, a quello che lascia a chi rimane in vita. Così come ho trovato notevoli alcuni espedienti narrativi utilizzati, ad esempio l’intervista per il provino a The Real World, programma di MTV, che diventa un pretesto per raccontarci molto della sua infanzia e dei suoi genitori. É così che scopriamo di più sul padre, un alcolista spesso violento, e della madre, incapace di fermare il marito quando alzava le mani sui figli e, anzi, disposta a scendere a patti con lui perché stufa di dover combattere contro una situazione troppo grande per le sue sole forze.
Dall’altro lato, però, molti brani li ho trovati inutilmente prolissi e poco interessanti. E’ sicuramente un mio limite, ma tutto ciò che riguardava la nascita della rivista fondata da Eggers con l’amico Moody l’ho trovata estremamente noiosa. Insomma, mi pareva di annaspare tra monologhi strappalacrime e dialoghi fuori contesto. Ero un po’ stranita, ecco, e lo sono rimasta fino a fine lettura.

I've been reading this book for about three months now and I just can't bring myself to finish it (and I only have 17 pages left). This is the first book I've read by Dave Eggers, and I've been told not to judge his other works based on this memoir. Memoirs can be tricky beasts after all.

In the beginning I really enjoyed this book. Eggers actually did have an interesting life and he tells his story in stream-of-consciousness (sp?), which I found to be really interesting...at first. It was the first time I've read a book written in this style and I found it to be witty. I could actually see myself thinking the same kinds of things he was thinking as he went through different situations.

But then, as the book goes on, the whole stream-of-consciousness thing becomes really cumbersome. It blocks the flow of the story. It BORED me to tears. I started skipping pages halfway through because I felt like I'd already read most of what he was saying. My eyes glazed over and all I wanted to do was burn this book or throw it out the window. Anything to be finished with it.

I don't know if I can count it as a book I've read, considering I never actually finished it. But I think having read 421 pages should count, don't you?

Needless to say, I found this book highly disappointing. You can read its synopsis on Wikipedia and get about the same amount of information there.

Well, this was an uphill struggle.
Such dense writing, about nothing important - paragraphs and paragraphs of random crap, like throwing a frisbee, or whether or not he will sleep with a girl and then being unsure what actually occurred afterwards.
I’m baffled that Eggers managed to drag this out for just under 500 pages.
There is no feeling, I didn’t connect with any of the characters, they were so two-dimensional. Just a timeline of his life bringing up his brother after his parents died. Moving from house to house, the paperwork he forgets, the difficulty of juggling his social life with the raising of a dependent. But the writing was just so tedious, so bulky, I didn’t like it, skimmed a lot and just generally felt like I’d wasted my time. I liked the premise, just not the execution.

Yet another DNF for me. I almost threw the book at the wall as soon as I started reading his annoyingly self-aware introduction, but decided to persevere. The decision was misguided, as it turned out, for it just became one of those books whose author is more focused on flashing his style while forgetting that the reader is there for the story. Like someone else here on Goodreads said, if Jane Austen wasn't too cool to tell a straightforward story, neither are you.

Desde que soube que este livro tinha sido publicado que o quis ler e parti para esta leitura com enormes expectativas. Por um lado, o autor - Dave Eggers - tem sido muito elogiado pela crítica; por outro, só o título por si só é muito sugestivo, e o leitor não espera menos do que uma obra extraordinária, fruto de um assombroso génio.

Autobiográfica, pelo menos na sua essência, esta obra de não-ficção rapidamente nos transporta para o território do romance. A história de uma família órfãos improváveis e a ainda mais improvável história de um órfão de 22 anos que ficou responsável pelo seu irmão mais novo, Christopher, são premissas que nos prendem de imediato. A relação de Dave com o seu irmão Toph (a alcunha pela qual é conhecido) é ela própria assombrosa e genial, imatura e (ir)responsável, caótica e (dis)funcional, tumultuosa e ternurenta, tudo em simultâneo.

A história das doenças e das mortes dos pais de Eggers é-nos contada através de sensações e memórias soltas. Esta tragédia familiar ocorre em Chicago, cidade natal que todos abandonam de imediato, rumo a São Francisco, onde tem início uma nova vida familiar totalmente reconfigurada.

Nos anos 90, numa América em transformação, onde a Internet e os media começam a dominar o quotidiano, sobressai o idealismo próprio de quem tem 20 anos, se considera invencível e, de certa forma, destinado a grandes feitos. É este idealismo que está na base da criação da revista Might, outro dos eixos centrais deste livro. A Might foi fundada em São Francisco por Eggers e alguns amigos que já o acompanhavam nos tempos em que morava em Chicago e é um produto da chamada "Geração X", jovens intelectualmente transgressivos, com uma postura de desafio perante a geração anterior no que se refere à aquisição de direitos, à libertação sexual e à valorização da mulher.

Eggers está no meio de todo este turbilhão sociológico, mas forçosamente tenta proteger ao máximo a estrutura familiar que ergueu de raiz em torno do seu irmão mais novo, substituindo-se aos próprios pais, numa época em que o conceito de família está em simultânea decadência e transformação. Dave vê-se forçado a substituir o seu papel de filho pelo de pai, numa altura em que todos os valores, crenças e ideologias são postos em causa pelo advento da Internet, das novas tecnologias e de novos conceitos mediáticos, como o programa The Real World, da MTV, que vulgarizou o conceito de reality show, até aí desconhecido.

A história dos irmãos Eggers entrecruza-se, portanto, com a história da revista Might e com as estórias de uma série de outras personagens secundárias, que acabam por se transformar em personagens-tipo cuja função é ilustrar o que foi a década de 90 numa cidade que estava no centro de todas estas mudanças tecnológicas, sociais e comportamentais.

A grande mais-valia deste livro (e da própria história pessoal do autor) é ilustrar de uma forma tão original o modo como um pré-adulto de 22 anos conseguiu ser bem sucedido na missão de educar uma criança nos anos 90, onde tudo era novidade e possibilidade, passível de ser posto em causa, destruído e reerguido todos os dias, caso fosse necessário.

Gostei mais da ideia por detrás do livro do que do livro em si, que se torna de certa forma enfadonho e repetitivo no último terço. Gostava de ter ficado a conhecer melhor os outros irmãos de Dave (Beth e Bill), que acabam por se transformar em personagens secundárias, quase acessórias, como se as únicas unidades significativas fossem Dave e Toph.

Ainda assim, é uma leitura que vale a pena e a tradução é excelente, pelo que nunca senti ao longo do livro que o significado ou simbolismo de determinada situação ou referência se perdessem por não estar a ler o texto original.

omg OMG! which one of you was it?!?!? which one of you snekay little emo kids managed to pull this off!?

you know, wilcan's level 400 creative writing class? last semester of my senior year of college? we had the classroom in Times Hall that didn't get air conditioning! i passed out in the middle of class right before spring break? that one time, when the health center prescribed me the wrong medication for my bronchitis!!!! don't you remember!?

well i do. don't think i didn't catch this. i've narrowed the potential culprits down to just half the class already, but it's going to be pretty hard from here, considering the INSANE amount of students who thought "stream of consciousness" was an adequate way to convey all emotions, character development, foreshadowing, suspense, and or basic plot, for the entirety of their novellas.

it's ok though, i'm going to work this out. if i divide that class among groups, we've got our basic five.

1. jocks/journalism majors who needed four writing credits to graduate

2. the overweight harbingers of creative death via estrogen and bad romance "storylines" that WERE NOT HARLEM ROMANCES! (of course, dears)

3. the emo kids (this gets slightly complicated because we have to have sub groups, there were so many.)
3a. emo kids who were emo because they were too scared to be goths. wore a lot of black, and drew on themselves with magic marker. amusing only because our college was in a place where i rained... a lot.
3b. emo kids who wore flannel. they are all writing the next great american novel, which just happens to be about themsevles.
3c. emo poets. nuff said.

4. the two boys from TV/R who wrote every short story requirement about a fart named Bob who aspired to be a folk singer. god bless you gentlemen, wherever you now are.

5. the kids who just liked to write. (i'm not sure where to put lacy. quiet, shy little lacy, who seemed normal, until that writing assignment where we had to imagine a horrifying event through the eyes of a character we would never otherwise assume. lacy, who normally wrote touching vignettes about cute little old people, read aloud to the class a graphic, horrifying short story about a farmer girl who has wild sex with her brother until their father finds them and stabs her through the heart with a pitchfork. i still have nightmares)

Now, I know it isn't the TV/Radio majors, because last time I heard from them one had been expelled for growing the largest Marijuana farm ever amongst pea plants in the bio-halls greenhouse. Jocks aren't motivated enough. And there's a lot of sexual frustration in "a heartbreaking work", so i didn't wanna rule out the harbingers of creative death, but lets be honest. not even they could make it through 400 pages of very very very little bodice ripping sex.

so that leaves, of course, the emo kids. the MASTERS of self involved stream of conscious rambling that verges on mind numbing blather. which makes perfect sense. one day, the magic marker musta just imploded your mind, man, and you realized... shit, i'm neve gonna get my story published unless i tie up dave eggers in my basement and substitute my writing for his.

and it was a good plot. you almost had me. there were little tidbits of emotion driven plot in which i found myself tempted to invest in the storyline. but there WAS NO STORYLINE, was there? the only interesting part was *sometimes* the characters, and they weren't even characters! oh the irony... it's a MEMOIR! dave eggers/you didn't have to think, you just described real people who were actually interesting! damn. it's brilliant.

if only that secretary at the miami herald would slip up and give me dave berry's address. i too would be well on my way towards...

towards...

huh. i'll get back to you on that one.

Дейв Егърс романизира личната си трагедия: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/s...

Тези над 500 страници наглед могат да се съберат в изречение – двама родители умират скоро един след друг, децата им трябва да се оправят сами, а Дейв Егърс, точно влязъл в 20-те си години, трябва да поеме грижата за своя седемгодишен брат Тоф, слагайки до голяма степен своя личен живот на пауза. Но и не могат, защото всъщност се случват много повече неща, свързани със създаване на едно списание, опитите на приятел на Егърс да се самоубие – че и по-лошо, да се измъкне от книгата му (“Ей така, майната му, тъпако. Тръгвам си. / Какво? / Няма да съм шибана история в тъпата ти книга.”), бдението край леглото на една пострадала тежко колежка, издирването на един портфейл и пространните измисляния на страхотии, които могат да се случат с Тоф във всеки миг, в който не е под опеката на брат си.

ИК Жанет 45
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/s...

This book and "You Shall Know Our Velocity!" were both bestsellers. I tried them both. Neither were for me. I doubt I made it more than 100 pages between the two of them, I hated them that much.

One of those books that carries such social-cultural baggage that it's hard to see the text itself, this memoir/novel as is hard for me to judge because of biographical similarities between me and Eggers. Rereading it recently, I again see why so many people find it insufferable, and I also find it obvious why it moves so many people. Eggers has a genuine talent for a certain kind of prose-poem reverie, and there's several in here. I actually don't mind the meta-modern showiness, really, as these kinds of postmodern tricks are now so well-worn that you can forget about them as form and just work through their function in the text. Unfortunately, the perpetual jokiness has aged really poorly, if it ever was worthwhile at all; the fact that there's a built-in excuse of Eggers being intentionally annoying, while certainly true, doesn't make reading the book any more pleasant. What does is getting towards the end, where he lets go of various pretensions and the self-defensive """irony""" and just writes, and it's very moving, for me. I don't know that there's any other version of this book that's any better. But there's good stuff here and I think people dismiss it as a curio of its time too quickly.

Do skip the additional afterward in the paperback version, though. It's mostly just Eggers complaining about being famous.

Ci sono momenti in cui la vita ti gira male, sei stressato e irritabile e niente ti va a genio. In quei momenti un libro può avere effetti straordinari, riconciliarti con il mondo e darti una nuova spinta. Oppure, può divenire l’oggetto su cui si concentra tutta la tua frustrazione, il capro espiatorio su cui sfogare la tua rabbia repressa. Quando sei in una situazione simile dovresti evitare di esprimere giudizi perché saranno poco oggettivi inevitabilmente condizionati dal tuo stato d’animo.

Fatta questa doverosa premessa, dico che ho trovato questo romanzo prolisso, noioso, inconcludente ed a tratti decisamente irritante. Eggers è troppo concentrato a dare sfoggio del suo straordinario genio per poter perdere tempo a scrivere una storia. Ma queste parole vanno interpretate alla luce della premessa (:

I'm not really sure how to rare this book if I'm being perfectly honest. I loved it, then I hated it, and then I fell somewhere in between. Some of it seemed pointless and boring. Some of it made me laugh. I think the problem is is that I'm not a 20-something year old, I didn't loose my parents, and I wasn't responsible for a preteen because of it. I just couldn't relate.

Alrighty. I provide an outline to what I learned from this book:
1. Hooked from the start, I plowed through the first eleventy-whatever chapters under the fluorescents at Barnes and Noble and whilst crossing the autumnal Smoky Mountains in the backseat of roommates' cars. I was satisfied. I was amazed, heartbroken, staggered...Eggered!
2. I continued my literary pillage of Egger's twenties while couchridden with a cold. I dreamed of my Grandmother Wilma that night. Cancer killed her, and Eggers let me realize that I don't think enough about it. Eggers demands we look our killers, literal and figurative, in the face...but starts to lose his point amid the blah blah blah about Might. Man, how can he still not embrace the death of that magazine?!? He relies to much on our common experience that our dearest brainchildren are continuously in danger from without. By the end, it seems he's all but forgotten that he was murdering Might from the beginning! (e.g. using his fervor to a concerted, appreciable end, then bashing the results & by extension all his hard efforts...like the "Screw those Idiots" stickers).
3. Grabbing a chapter here and there when I could to finish the thing, I have had too much time to ponder between passages. I began to anticipate that Eggers would end up angry at the universe and *imagine!* self-centered, cliffhanging.
4. Last Chapter SPOILER : He does. And sorta ruins the effect. The realness I so appreciated at the start is plastic and fluff, vanity and profanity, a whine undeserving of a listener. Maybe he meant to do that...but I need something with which to compare. OR I need to meet the guy face to face. Oddly, I'd say it's my cynical side (as opposed to the usual ingenuous side) longing for just-enough redemption to be hidden in the back cover, written in invisible ink after "finally, finally, finally." Eggers offered me the veracious carefully veiled within the maudlin (a combo I believe God as my Lord is fond of), but the truth does NOT out; Eggers puts his happy mask back on & with $39, 567.68 check in tow) goes back into hiding! Argh! Well, sorta argh. I guess.
The friend who was, unknowingly, the final impetus to me reading AHWOSG tells me that there's a version with an alternate ending...and I could perhaps borrow it from him (bless him!). Gladness. Check back for my re-review where I don't doubt I will have changed my mind and added that extra half-star.