Thanks to Adam Hodge for the creative wedding party gift! Really enjoyed it.

Much darker than what Eggers was known for up until this point, this bothered me as a younger reader. Reading it again today, I find more depth to the text than the sad turns many of the stories take, though there are still some gut punch moments that leave me winded emotionally.


Another – A man couriers something to Egypt and finds himself with free time. Though unexperienced, he rides a horse with two guides through the desert to see some pyramids. Though shaken to his core by the riding, at each site he is underwhelmed with the bare interior of the pyramid. But still they ride on. (2.5 stars)

What It Means When a Crowd in a Faraway Nation Takes a Soldier Representing Your Own Nation, Shoots Him, Drags Him from His Vehicle and Then Mutilates Him in the Dust – A man experiencing ennui sees a picture of a dead soldier abroad and, for some reason, it feels personal…while domestic tragedy does not affect him in the same way. (2.5 stars)

The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water – (feat. characters from You Shall Know Our Velocity!) Pilar goes to visit her friend Hand in Costa Rica. While there they swim and surf and make love. This story features some of those stop-you-in-your tracks phrasings that made me fall for Eggers’ writing all those years ago. (4 stars)

On Wanting to Have Three Walls Up Before She Gets Home – A man works on building a small house in the backyard (as a fort for their not-yet-born baby) to impress his wife. (1 star)

Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance – A man named Fish drives from San Jose to Bakersfield to visit his cousin Adam in the hospital. This is the seventh time Adam has tried to kill himself and Fish is both bored of it and unsympathetic. After visiting Adam, Fish goes to pick up Adam’s stuff from the hotel he was living at. There he unwittingly gives a prostitute a ride. He ends up staying in a Red Roof Inn after he tries unsuccessfully asking his ex to stay on her couch. He considers blowing off both Adam and the ex the next day. (1.5 stars)

She Waits, Seething, Blooming – A mother sits waiting for her son to return home past 2:30AM. By the time, his car pulls in the driveway, her mind has gone from anger to looking forward to chiding him. (2 stars)

Quiet – Tom goes to visit his one-armed friend Erin in Scotland. They were long-time friends, even co-workers at one time in DC before she moved there. Tom has loved her from afar for years and hopes that this visit leads somewhere. He learns that she had a threesome with two of their former co-workers and gets into a jealousy spiral. Erin gets sick on their trip through the countryside. When she decides she is well again, they go walking and Tom rapes her. Ashamed, Erin tells him not to feel sorry about it. They never talk again after this trip. (1 star)

Your Mother and I – A father tells his daughter about all of he and her mother’s successes—converting all the world’s energy to solar energy and wind power, painting all the roads red, curing AIDS and Parkinson’s as well as stranger things like painting all of Kansas purple. He also overshares about he and her mother’s sex life. (2 stars)

Naveed – Stephanie wants desperately to sleep with James, even though he will soon move away. But she worries his being number 13 on her sexual tally may be problematic for a future husband, partially because of the phrase “a baker’s dozen.” She resolves that she will also have to sleep with someone else the next weekend so as to avoid the “baker’s dozen” label. (1 star)

Notes from a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone – Written as actual notes for a story. This story is to be about an old man named Basil who has a critical illness and whose wife passed long ago. Basil decides he doesn’t want to die alone, but rather in front of a large assembled crowd. His son Derek and an old flame who is an event planner help in the planning. Ultimately, it happens at a minor league baseball stadium with four thousand in attendance. An orchestra plays and Basil dies. (3 stars)

About the Man Who Began Flying After Meeting Her – A man meets a woman and feels inspired by her to take up flying small aircraft…but only if he can do so with her. If she is not up for it, he will ditch her and the idea for flying. If he meets someone else, it will be for something else. Flying belongs solely to him and this woman the story is about. (2 stars)

Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly – Rita’s sister Gwen bought them both a hiking package up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, but Gwen gets pregnant and cannot go, insisting Rita still go. Rita does the hike, thinking with a sense of loss about the foster kids she had and wanted to adopt, but that her parents adopted first. During the hike we get to know the other folks on the hike, including some of the local porters who are carrying the food and duffel bags. One night of this perpetually rainy journey, the tent that the porters are sleeping in leaks and the porters do not ever wake up. Rita only learns of this when she is at the peak, after which she immediately starts her descent, quite upset. (4 stars)

When They Learned to Yelp – Eggers breaks down what makes up a yelp (a shriek, a whine and a moan) and says there are some who have never yelped and that they are both stronger and weaker for it. (2 stars)

After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned – Steven the dog (the narrator) recalls moments from his life, including when he was thrown into a river as a puppy and saved. He also recalls the events that led to his death: at night, he and other dogs would race around the woods behind their owners’ houses, including one dangerous jump. He recalls other dogs not making the jump, some okay, others not. One night he tries the jump, hits his head and dies. He speaks of the afterlife and meeting God, who is the sun. (3 stars)

A particularly good experience with a book of short stories, I'd have to say. :]

I love Dave Eggers. A really lot. This is only the second book of his that I've read, and it won't go on my favorites, but I was really pleased with the short stories a lot... I think his style lends itself to novels much better, since the longer short stories were my favorites:

"The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water" (Pilar and Hand from Velocity. What is not to love here. I was so happy I squealed.)

"Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance"

"Quiet" (This one broke my heart on so many levels.)

Dave Eggers is so refreshing, so powerful.

Please do find time for this literary treat. Simply winderful

Honestly not sure how I got through this book. Some of the short stories were great, others I wanted to bang my head into a wall.

These short stories -- ranging in length from a page to 50 pages -- explore different manifestations of human hunger (in the sense of feeling that something is missing). They were well written, but I found myself getting annoyed with the voice of the privileged person who finds him/herself in oh-so-much agony upon discovering the injustice in the world. I guess it's unfair to expect anything else from Dave Eggers, and certainly it's the reaction I want those people to have, but... their reactions to the indignities of the world are not what I'm interested in.

All that said, I really enjoyed one of the longer stories near the end, entitled "Up the mountain coming down slowly". It's about this woman who joins a group that's climbing Kilimanjaro, and it explores the dynamics between the climbers, the guides, the porters...

My first Eggers - he gives all his stories very arch titles, which I have always found a bit off-putting but the actual emotions and mental lives of his characters are compelling and (to me) realistic. These are short stories and I appreciate the fact that they don't end with a bang - unlike Flannery O'Connor or someone where the characters putter along for a few dozen pages and you're not sure what it's leading to until someone unexpectedly gets decapitated.

Please read this book. (But then oh please don't tell me if you don't love it.)

I don't know what to make of this book.

I love Eggers' writing style, and some of the passages here are stunning, describing totally mundane things in ways that make you notice them (Clouds! Cheap hotels! Waiting! Lots and lots of waiting!). Tiny mundane dramas are also portrayed really interestingly, in ways that make them feel momentous, and that nurture our sympathy for the people going through them. The stories use different styles, and going on for different durations (sometimes only one page, sometimes the space of a long short-story), so that they can get exactly around whatever it is that is at their heart, and not take any more or any less space than is necessary for that one goal. Great!

Despite this, I can't get into the book as a book. It's been months since I started it, and I have still only read about half of the stories. It has (temporarily I'm sure!) turned me off of short stories , even though I am normally a huge fan of the genre. I can't identify why this is, what is missing that would keep me going, or what is present that is turning me off. I definitely don't see the stories (as good as they may be individually) cohering to make something bigger.

This is a zany, offbeat, at times darkly comedic collection of short stories in true Dave Eggers' style. By which I mean, stories with non sequiturs (animals make appearances and are not seen again), lots of random segues, magic realism -- clouds that banter, moon that accuses, etc. There's a story that's just a collection of notes for a short story to come (and hence, there are lots of alternative details, plot twists). There's one that's just a blank number of pages. Most of the characters are off-the-wall and on the move (one in Egypt, one in Costa Rica, another in Isle of Skye, and one climbing Kilimanjaro, among others) and tackling "love" in one form or another (whether running away, being paranoid about, or turning it into hate). They are also infinitely humorous and experimental (one page stories that are not flashes but more like character developments). It's not everyone's cup of tea, but Dave Eggers is a consummate writer, and his prose and continuously surprising plot twists and funny details keep you zipping through this ultra-fast read.

This book is a collection of short stories rather than a novel. Although its definitely nice to see new short fiction come out since it seems like a rare form of literature these days, I don’t really feel this book lived up to potential. Quite a few of the stories, such as “Quiet” and “Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance” were quite good, however several other stories were too experimental or just seemed incomplete which brought down the collection. My main complaint was that the book was a little too short and could have used a few more stories, especially his ultra-short stories which I think I found the most entertaining. All in all it is nice to see new collections of short stories but this particular book fell a little short of my expectations.