A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

i've just finished eggers' A.W.O.S.G. and, i must say, it's nice to not have to lift that weighty volume anymore. really, in just the purely physical sense, and even in its mere paperback form, the thing is heavy. weighty. long.

i'm a tad bit mixed on my feelings, which is odd, because i'd expected to be vehement in one direction or the other about it at this point. it seems to me that it is the kind of book that you capital-h-hate or you italicized-lovelovelove. i liked it. for the most part, i enjoyed it.

the best aspect for me was that i knew nothing of the story, the plot, the narrative, the facts, et al. before i read it. in fact (buries face in hands) i thought it was a novel. but, no--apparently it's a memoir. but not a full memoir; it is a segment of a fairly young life, a patchwork piece of a larger quilt that alludes to the other segments that make the whole. i think it is its holey-ness that keeps me from loving the book.

i also knew just a shade about dave eggers before i began. in fact, i think i could probably nod and say, "mmm, yes, mcsweeney's" if his name came up. this is probably because my mother told me that. my mother is extremely savvy, and secretly hip, and also is one of the few people i know who can properly "surf" the web. she knows things. she finds things. she gets me things--books--off my amazon wish list and puts them with my stocking on christmas morning. this is how i came to own A.W.O.S.G. of course i filed it on my shelves and didn't pick it up until a couple of days ago. i think it struck me to read it then because someone had mentioned it somewhere out there in the blogosphere (don't we hate that term? can we find a new one, please?) on one of those book memes (again, meme? i understand memo was taken, but, meme?) that's going around like the flu. someone, i believe, had listed it as one of many books they felt was overrated. the lightbulb went off. i found it on my shelf. and i began to read.

just when eggers' self-conscious, self-congratulatory, hyperstylized intro pointed out its own shortcomings (namely the above mentioned attributes) he moved on. i trudged ahead, eager for the "real" story to start. now, 400+ pages later, and i'm still a little hungry for the real story. there are gaps. gaps that i can see exist to protect, to cushion, to arouse, to point out the fact that in life there are gaps and lapses and things we don't know, but the gaps bother me. i want info. i want details.

i found that i could read fast, skimming, and not miss a thing. but in some places i had to go back and read over a part, because i hadn't understood. what timeframe was this? is this theory or memory? did this happen? is this hyperbole?

i don't know. i'm not sure.

so, yeah. i liked it. i'm not passionately for nor against it.

the obligatory testing and kick-off post

i wanted a place to keep track of all the books i read. so, why not do it here?

i've been intrigued by those folks i know who embark on projects like "52 in 52" (which, to my understanding, is an aim to read 52 books during 52 weeks, or, as those of us who can't count that high like to say, one year). i always think to myself, hey! i bet i read an average of 52 books a year, at least. i am, after all, getting a master's in english! (okay, so technically the MA is in creative writing, but i do take several lit courses.) anyhow, the point of all this is that i wanted a place to keep a log of the books i've read and am reading.

and here we are.

i have made some sidebar categories, with the titles of (and links to) what i've read thus far, which is what i can recall reading since the start of 2005 (i'm at 22!) which means i'm about two titles off to balance my title-to-week ration. this isn't much to be worried about, because i'm guessing that i've left something(s) off my list, and i'm also about 75 pages close to finishing my latest read, which is Dave Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I know for certain that I did not include a couple of the anthologies I've had to read bits and pieces of in some classes this year, and a couple of poetry books, as well as the few tour guides i've worn ragged in my travels to vancouver, portland/seattle, new york, and san francisco, and i'm also not including the piles, and stacks, and massive amounts of critical articles i've ploughed through for some course related work.

i think i'm doing pretty well, actually!

i've organized the sidebar into four categories:
NOSE BURIED IN (FOR FUN) is what i'm reading purely for pleasure.
NOSE BURIED IN (FOR SCHOOL) is what i'm reading because it's been assigned. which doesn't mean there's no pleasure in it, but chances are i wouldn't be reading it otherwise.
STUDYING FOR THE GRE is an ongoing process. i'm due to take the GRE (both the regular and the literature subject test) in the fall, because most, if not all, of the PhD programs to which i am applying require them. i've been working from the priceton review book for a couple of months now, and am trying to round out my BA and MA work/reading thus far (which has been somewhat unbalanced in favor of contemporary or medieval work) with classics, or, at the very least, bits and pieces from those norton anthologies we english students know and love.
CLOSED THE BOOK ON should be self-explanatory.

it's probably not too hard to scan the last list and figure out what classes i took at the start of the year (narratives of the vietnam war and a close study of the medieval poem piers plowman) and doing all that reading meant that, on the one hand, i was working at a one-two title per week rate, but that i also was reading jack all for myself. it's those times when i bury my face in dvd reruns as relief--who can read on top of all that reading? but now things have mellowed, and i'm aiming to keep up the reading. it makes me a better writer, for one, and that is something that i can see as a tangible result.

so here's to books, and the tremendous comfort, joy, learning, and delight they can bring!