About halfway through. This is so good. I am surprised and delighted. Surprised by my delight, and delighted by the surprise of how much I like this.

And now I am done. And it was great the whole way through.

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).

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.

manca le promesse. gi�� l'inizio, che �� per�� la fine, sembra promettere molto. e la storia c'��, ma non basta a farne un libro fluido e coinvolgente. �� troppo introspettivo e si perde tra mille elucubrazioni mentali. peccato, mi aspettavo molto di pi��.

La quarta stellina la aggiungo solo ed esclusivamente per la copertina cartonata e telata sulla quale �� scritto il primo capitolo del libro.

I can see flashes of Dave Eggers writing style here, but it seems like he didn't quite have enough figured out writing-craft-wise to carry this particular story off. I will say that for a story with a similar idea, of someone trying to understand different cultures, and getting lost in it, A Hologram for the King is MUCH better.

I gave this book four stars because it was really well written. But it is also one of those books that makes me feel less smart than I know I am, because I feel like I need to read it again to "get it." I was never quite clear of their purpose in wanting to give away the money and kept waiting to get to it. In the end I wondered if I missed something. I went back to the beginning of the book and saw the first page said something like "I wrote this book before my mother and I drowned" and had totally forgotten that page even existed. While I do feel like maybe I could get more out of it if I read it again, I didn't really enjoy reading it enough to follow through with that. I think the book was distinctly masculine, in that there weren't really any strong female characters, and it was just too much of a dude's tale for me.

After Will comes into a small, unexpected fortune, he decides to travel around the world with his best friend Hand to give the money away to strangers.

The story itself is very bizarre, but Eggers' character-crafting skills make it well worth the read. The trip, the money, these are only devices to get us into Will's head, to flesh him out into a real person. Eggers knows how to write about deeply wounded people, as anyone who has read his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, will know.

This is my first introduction to Dave Eggers.

And I think I would like him as a person, I just don't know if we get along that well in that "Author and Reader" kind of way.

I get it man, I think I really do. Live life like you dream life, fucking soar!

Right?

"You Shall Know Our Velocity" read a lot like my lonely days. Sometimes, I just do things to pass the time. Because it's too much to be alone with what's happening in your head. So I will keep busy to stay afloat until something better comes along.

Why do I need to read this to remind me that life is too hard some days. Regardless, Eggers did manage to create in this book a sense of whimsy that filled me up and then floated away.

Maybe I will appreciate the lightness of life some greener day.

Maybe I secretly did like this book.

Maybe you will too, secretly.

I really liked the nuttiness of the characters in this book, especially how it is woven into the emotional crisis of their lives and the relatively pointless crisis they wrap themselves up in. It does seem to meander in kind of an odd way and where it goes overall is a little bit of a puzzle, but I did have a good time all in all.

Lifelong friends Will and Hand set out on a journey around the world with $32,000 Will has mysteriously inherited. Their goal: to give all the money away. They encounter inevitable challenges based on their last minute decisions and their objectives are curious, if not irrational. Eggers's debut novel focuses on this rational and irrational, but he also highlights life and death, the illusion of progress, and ultimately, the idea of movement. If Will is always moving, then he will always be catapulting towards the future, living his life completely.

With great flashbacks that remind us of our youthful innocence and riddled with memories of their deceased friend Jack, You Shall Know Our Velocity! is an excellent postmodern narrative of a 27-year old man struggling with his existence. It's preachy at times, which is probably the most consistent critique I have, but this preachiness is eventually forgiven thanks to its captivating narrative, one that is centered around seeing new things, meeting new people, and giving away hundreds of dollars worth of cash randomly and "without control." Money is their language and traveling is their vehicle of execution. Ironically, as Will struggles to get over the unfairness in the sudden death of his best friend, ahe also discovers new meaning to his fragile life in his close encounters with death.

To Eggers, movement is a form of expression and like the tribes of Chilean Jumping People, a form of identity. It can also be a form of salvation, unshackling the restrictions of death and allowing Will to let go and find new meaning outside of his boxed Northern Chicago existence. And this is why Eggers is so popular. He captures the voice of a new generation -- a critique can be he's too intentional in his efforts to speak to millennials -- and forces you to think about your own place in contemporary society.

This book is one of the most frustrating novels I have read. The characters have good back stories, the overall premise is great, and the opening paragraph is brilliant. That main issue I have is that both narrator and his right-hand-man are so bloody whiny. If they stopped looking at their bruised egos/navels I might be able to finish the book. Disappointing.

Conoscerete la vostra frustrazione...

Confesso che ho faticato ad arrivare alla conclusione di questo libro totalmente privo di bussola, così come lo sono i due protagonisti (il narratore e l'amico che lo accompagna): il futuro non esiste, il presente (luoghi, incontri, azioni, percorsi) è sottoposto a casualità pressochè completa, il passato riaffiora a sprazzi che forse costituiscono la parte più interessante dell'opera.

Lo stile è in buona parte riconducibile al famoso esordio di Eggers, "L'opera struggente di un formidabile genio", con quel massimalismo autoreferenziale che sa inanellare episodi di grande originalità e facilità di scrittura ma incorre con più o meno frequenza in digressioni verbose che spiazzano e deconcentrano l'attenzione del lettore.

Tutta un'altra cosa rispetto al pregevole "Erano solo ragazzi in cammino" con la sua compatta e commovente vicenda densa di vita e di realtà, il chè fa sorgere il sospetto che Eggers, per poter rendere al meglio, abbia bisogno di un nucleo forte a cui ancorare le sue opere.

Quando invece come in questo "Conoscerete la nostra velocità" ha la presunzione di potersi affidare al solo talento di scrittore (che indubbiamente non gli manca) è destinato dapprima ad incuriosire il lettore e poi a perderlo sempre più spesso durante la narrazione. Si ha l'impressione che i suoi "romanzi" cedano nella seconda parte, ma non credo che sia così: è la saturazione che sopravviene dopo tante pagine che, prese una o poche alla volta, manifestano un significato e spesso un fascino particolare ma, considerate nel complesso, finiscono col generare dietro la patina di scoppiettante esuberanza un fastidioso senso di ripetitività.