I'm not sure if I'm cut out for postmodern literature. Dave Eggers much-celebrated first novel (after the pseudo-memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) follows two friends who decide to travel around the world for a week, giving away approximately $32,000 randomly. The premise is certainly interesting, and the writing is often entertaining, but I think it occasionally was too aware of itself to really be a great novel.

The story is really one about grief - the grief these two friends share around the senseless death of a third friend a few months before, the grief the protagonist feels for his father's abandonment of his family as a child, the grief of being a drifting 20-something with no purpose in life. Perhaps, given Eggers' background, it's not a surprise, and I think he touches on these issues with realism and sensitivity.

To escape this grief - or, perhaps, to address it - the friends choose to fly around the world giving complete strangers bits of an absurd $32,000 windfall they recently acquired. What follows is an odd mix of hilarious travelogue, a meditation on the global sex industry, the role and power of rich Westerners, poverty in the third world, and more. This relatively entertaining and seemingly straightforward plot is laced with all sorts of odd episodes - internal monologues with imagined interlocutors, flashbacks to the events surrounding their friend's death, and plenty of opaque philosophizing. There's an odd moment in Senegal where a newly introduced character rhapsodizes about a 'fourth world' for a bit and then disappears - I felt like I was supposed to 'get' it, but I didn't. Maybe this is the fault of the reader and not the author, but I often felt like Eggers was trying to say something profound and I was just missing it.

I'd say my overall evaluation is that the book is uneven. There were bits where I genuinely felt Eggers really hit on a fantastic idea - a hilarious negotiation with a shopkeeper in Marrakesh, the weird-but-so-believable rubrics the friends use to choose who to give money to, the general zest for life he seems to be trying to convey. Yet other times the book's pacing was thrown off by obscure philosophizing and pop psychology. As I understand it, Eggers later wrote a 'frame' for the novel written from the perspective of the other friend which calls the entire reliability of the narrator into question. A classic postmodern move, perhaps, but not really for me.

So - at the end of the day, I think you'll find something worthwhile if you read the book. But it might not be your favorite piece of literature. Eggers is clearly a talent, but I wish he didn't know it.

Though this book is compared to On The Road, the similarities stop at both books being about travelling. While Kerouac describes, with compassion and care, his fellow human beings, Eggers draws broad sketches of the people he meets.

The main character, Will, doesn't change. The most worthwhile conversations he has are in his own mind, in which he makes up responses for the people he is talking to. This does absolutely nothing to further the plot.

There are some truly beautiful moments in the book, and if the reader has ever lost someone close to them suddenly, can certainly relate.

But (and this is my personal belief) when I read a book, when I have finished I ask myself the question "What was the point?" What was the point of the story, what point does the author want to make. And I am just not personally interested in books where the point made is "Life's a bitch and then you die," or when there is no point at all. Velocity seems to be a mixture of the two.

Though I think this is still an important book to read because I think Eggers really is documenting this generation, and the problem isn't in his writing, it's in society.

I usually don’t blog books I don’t like, but You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers deserves special treatment because it proved such a disappointment. The opening sentence is one of the best I’ve ever seen (The caps are from the text itself.)

EVERYTHING WITHIN TAKES PLACE AFTER JACK DIED AND BEFORE MY MOM AND I DROWNED IN A BURNING FERRY IN THE COOL TANNIN-TINTED GUAVIARE RIVER, IN EAST-CENTRAL COLOMBIA, WITH FORTY-TWO LOCALS WE HADN'T YET MET. IT WAS A CLEAR AND EYEBLUE DAY, THAT DAY, AS WAS THE FIRST DAY OF THIS STORY, A FEW YEARS AGO IN JANUARY, ON CHICAGO'S NORTH SIDE, IN THE OPULENT SHADOW OF WRIGLEY AND WITH THE WIND COMING LOW AND SEARCHING OFF THE JAGGED HALF-FROZEN LAKE. I WAS INSIDE, VERY WARM, WALKING FROM DOOR TO DOOR.

Makes you want to get in there, right? And the first few pages carry the same momentum. Two twenty-something buddies are trying to arrange to fly around the world in a week and give away $32, 000 in the process. Never mind why. At this point, you’re too caught up in figuring out routes and time zones and datelines to care about anything but the rush of phone calls and other arrangements. Eggers provides hints of the why’s of course, vague foreshadowings, and this makes the urgency of the situation all the more compelling.
Once the journey begins, however, the book degenerates into a mishmash of psuedointellectual psuedophilosophy and painfully lame attempts at humor. Many of the pair’s adventures seem like outtakes from a Dumb and Dumber movie (We’re now driving with our tongues. What a gas!!!) and the TV series Jackass (jumping from a moving car onto a moving donkey cart).
The protagonist is in a lot of physical and emotional pain and had my sympathy, though it seemed it was about time the got over it, until the interpolation of a commentary about halfway through the book from his partner, who said that the beating he said he received never happened and that his tragically dead friend never existed. I guess the friend was supposed to represent some good and innocent part of himself over which he would grieve endlessly, but I lost the little interest I had left in his plight right then. The rest of the book was a combination of skim and a trudge for me.
Eggers has made significant contributions to the American literary scene as the founder of McSweeney’s, and his first published work, a memoir entitled A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was a finalist for a non-fiction Pulitzer, so he’s no slouch as an editor and a literary force. I hate to dis someone of his caliber, but YSKOV just did not find the right audience when it fell into my hands.

I read the book, read the reviews, found out that I completely missed what I think was a major plot point. That couldn't be, because I read it from cover to cover and enjoyed it immensely. I then realized that the version of the book I read was later revised, with an additional segment, with the major plot point. Duh. Thanks Eggers, quirky author you. I'm all for gimmicks, but honestly.

I'm not sure I understood what Will and Hand stood for, since not much of their actions have a background, not much explanation, except for the one the major plot point overturns. They're both losers, they want to travel the world, but only have 7 days, and most days they're just waiting around for the connecting planes. They want to go to a number of places, go nowhere close; they want to give out money, but find it surprisingly difficult and in some cases enabling something they didn't want to. There's sex on offer in several places, they take none. None of it implied anything to me that I can explain. But I still loved the book, for some reason. It was refreshing and fun, even if loss featured in almost every page and every action. I also adored Will and Hand. Maybe I just like gimmicks.

I'm surprised I hadn't heard more about this one prior to picking it up. You Shall Know has Eggers in top form. Never mind all the clever metafictional pyrotechnics (all of which are very well done, by the way)--within lies everything you'd want in a novel. Laughter a-plenty, beautiful prose, wonderfully executed dialogue, passages that you'll want to read back two, three, four times. I've found through Goodreads that my fatal weakness as a book-reviewer is that when I really like something, I often find myself at a loss for things to say about it. So consider the lack of substance here a testament to Eggers' astonishing achievement.

To start off with, this is one of my favourite book titles in recent memory. It's commanding without being threatening and I find its implications very poetic. Sadly, but also luckily, I suspect there will be few, if any, times in my life where it is appropriate to announce "You shall know our velocity."

But onto the book. Given the inevitability of this review going viral, I'll insert my **Spoiler Alert!** here.

I didn't start out loving this book, for a few reasons. Firstly the premise (two young guys flying around the world and arbitrarily giving out money they arbitrarily acquired) irritated me. I know it was supposed to. I know the author wasn't trying to advocate for misguided and self-serving efforts at poverty alleviation, but I found that my disinterested dismissal of their plan affected my ability to get into the narrative. Secondly, I did not relate well to the two main characters (though there is only really one main character). This isn't to say that they weren't relatable, just that they represented a demographic (young, aggressive, rage-fueled, distraught, grieving young men) that is pretty detached from my experience. For me, it was their anger that distanced me.

However, maybe this was all part of the plan. I kept on reading, regardless of a clear connection with the story, and all of a sudden I found myself in the head of someone who was going through tragic, confusing, genuine, multi-faceted emotions. And all of a sudden, I was on the same page as him and the fact that it surprised me made it all the more profound.

I think I am going to end this here. And I suppose that means my spoiler alert was all for naught. Michelle Reviews Books 2.0 coming soon with an upgrade in accuracy and insight (hopefully).

Fairly early in this novel, I encountered a line that started me laughing for ten minutes (much to the irritation of the rest of the family). That raised expectations that it was going to be more enjoyable than it subsequently turned out to be. The going later became so tedious, in fact, that I considered not finishing.

The first problem was that the two main characters continually behave in a way that defies common sense so drastically that I felt physically uncomfortable. For example, having taken a plane to a random destination (Senegal, as it happens) with no purpose other than to touch down briefly, hand out money to random strangers, and then move on, they find themselves doing stuff like sneaking into a stranger's house to leave flowers (and hopefully not be shot in the process) and trying to tape an envelope full of money to a belligerent goat in the middle of the night.

It may be that I place too much value on money, and rational behavior, so that what they do violates my core principles. But whatever the reason, I want to identify with characters more closely than I could this case.

Extrapolating from what the principal narrator tells us, their undertaking may have been motivated in part by the double trauma of recently losing their mutual best friend in a gruesome highway accident and then being brutally attacked by strangers while clearing out the friend's storage locker. Throughout the narrative he describes the shocked reactions of people when they see his still-battered face, and quite clearly the lingering emotional pain is worse yet.

But when the other main character later steps in to add his perspective, he tells us there WAS no third friend, and no beating. He suggests these elements could simply be efforts "to thicken the plot a bit, to give it some kind of pseudo-emotional gravitas." He complains about the addition of these fictions and the omission of important things that did occur. The effect of this news on me was similar to that of n  The Life of Pin: namely, confusion, a vague sense of betrayal, and a what-the-hell attitude driven by a feeling that the author has cut me loose to believe or not as I see fit.

Because of its experimental nature, I'd put this book on the same shelf with n  The Raw Shark Textsn. But my sense is that it's by and for a generation other than mine, and so three stars for it is a stretch.

I'm a very patient person, and people say I have some sense of humor, so I've resisted more than sixty pages, before quitting a much overrated book.
Nothing important(excepting planning a trip and going to Senegal) not to say memorable, happens, if there are any traces of humour I'm not able to detect it, so good bye and good riddance. One more author I shall gladly avoid from now on...

I heart Dave Eggers. This book is awesome, especially if you enjoy traveling in obscure countries and dissecting ridiculous adventures for meaning. Eggers' style is very sticky and his humor is right in my wheelhouse. I liked this book significantly more than "A Heartbreaking Work..." (which was a fun read nonetheless). Something about the fact that it's a true novel and not quite as self-indulgent and autobiographical.

Anyway, I only feel slightly silly saying this is one of my favorite books. Admittedly, the reading experience was part of it -- I read it while lounging in Dutch coffeeshops during my final days of studying in Leiden, and world travel was a much-explored and romanticized theme for me -- but the characters are quirky and fascinating and the cameo appearances by random hilarious foreign fools in Senegal, Estonia and the like are not to be missed.

The illustrious Hand makes a later appearance in "How We Are Hungry," Eggers' book of short stories, in a story about surfing in Costa Rica where the horses have no symbolic significance.

I’m glad I read this although I had conflicting opinions all throughout the book.

The writing is unique and interesting and Eggers clearly has a powerful gift with words. The story is also challenging and thoughtful and I was continually fascinated by the concept. I loved the journey they took, and the juxtaposition Eggers creates between their being both constrained and liberated in their travels.

However, I don’t know if I love the execution. I found it to be a real effort to read and after a couple of hundred pages, I was trudging through for the sake of completion as opposed to enjoyment.

I had difficulty with the contradiction between Will as a moving & soulful character and Will as an idiot. It was like reading about Rodin’s “Thinker” in the body of a typically dumb American.

That being said, I was won over by the end. The Jumping People passage was brilliant. It romantically summed up the entire journey Will takes “running” and “jumping” around the world with Jack's weight and the burden of every voice he hears inside his head along the way.

Will is a mountain but moved like the wind and in such a way that almost made me feel like I could do that...just drive to an airport and in a moment's notice take a journey across the world without any regard to the destination.

La primera novela de Eggers pone en situación de desespero a dos jóvenes norteamericanos que, luego de perder a su mejor amigo en un trágico accidente, deciden viajar por el mundo reglando dinero a pobres miserables que quizás han sufrido más que ellos. “Ahora sabréis lo que es correr” quisiera ser una novela sobre las incertidumbres desesperantes que sobrevienen cuando el dolor supera cualquier sentido común; de modo que su lectura exige un nivel de compasión rayana con el misticismo más vulgar que uno pueda imaginar: la limosna como cura espiritual. Así, un título menos poético y más transparente para una lectura moralista sería “Ahora sabréis lo que es evadir”…

En la ilusión de esa interpretación pareciera que Eggers se propuso ridiculizar el ánimo mesiánico norteamericano que vemos a diario en las noticias sobre las políticas internacionales de defensa de la libertad y la democracia a través de la inyección de dólares en economías de países devastados por la guerra (que usualmente ha sido promovida previamente por esas políticas). Pero lo que resulta es una sucesión de malentendidos y presupuestos culturales desgastados por predecibles, o sea, cínicas evasiones.

Descontando las redundancias, a cuentagotas se encuentran episodios conmovedores, saltos al pasado en forma de recuerdos que llevaron a los personajes a salvar el mundo con la repartición de su azarosa fortuna: el descubrimiento de la crueldad de la niñez, las fiestas de su adolescencia, la consolidación de su amistad, la muerte de su mejor amigo y sus planes para descubrir la conspiración del equipo médico y a familia para no salvarlo de la ineluctable realidad de la muerte.

Por lo demás, la novela no invita a una segunda lectura. Es más, tampoco supone una revisión al resto de la obra del autor, salvo que se haya empezado por “Qué es el qué” o, incluso, por “Los monstruos”; pues no deja de avivar la sensación de que Eggers explota en su obra la conmiseración artificial que disfraza una suerte de autocompasión.

OK, Im fairly certain this isn't the *worst* book I've ever read. However, it hopefully will be the worst book I read this year - if by worst you mean, as I do, grating, annoying, and purposeless. This book should be subtitled First World Fratboy Problems or perhaps A Patience-Trying Work of Staggering Douchebaggery ("We have sooo much money, and we just can't find the right peasants to give it away to!") That isn't a direct quote - BUT ALMOST.

Really, there might be a story here; but the author decides not to tell it except by allusion. The book is three-quarters of the way done before you get anything more than Whiteboy Travelogue, and ye gods, that's a lot of whining about being stuck in Dakkar to put up with in hopes something will actually happen.

Should I have posted a spoiler alert? Because I just gave you the bulk of the plot right there. Two guys with a bunch of money go travelling in hopes of giving it away - in the most condescendingly clueless suburban pink boy ways possible. The subplot never develops, despite having a dead friend, an unexplained beating, a mother who might be encroaching on senility and oh! did I forget the plot twist from the beginning? Yeah - yeah I did. Because it is never mentioned again til the end AND REALLY NOT EVEN THEN, by which point, who cares?! You had your little slumming adventure, got rid of the money but not the white guilt, and then, then, we are finally reminded that something happens after the book is *over* that sounds like its a lot more interesting than the waahngst we just slogged through. Too bad it isn't in this book.

If Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is anything like this one, its no wonder I can't remember if I ever read it. In fact forgetting might be merciful. Let me also point out that its one thing if an author doesn't know how to spell pachysandra, but that no editor corrected it - dude, did you forget to press F7 when you finished? Bonehead move! - wow. If you're a twenty-something white guy with too much money and a personality about half an inch deep, you might enjoy this, somehow. Everyone else is advised to use their velocity to accelerate way past this turkey.