by Nicholson Baker
This minute observation has autistic elements in it that made it for me very hard to read. Intellectually a great piece, not necessarily enjoyable for me.
This is one of those times that I'd kill to have a half-star ability on Goodreads - because this is solidly a 3.5 star book. It's an interesting curiosity of a piece but also nothing that is spectacular or revelatory. It's in the vein of Woolf's stream-of-consciousness but a bit more ho-hum, a bit...
Cuando estoy en riesgo de aburrirme, juego un juego: Pensar algo, luego pensar acerca de lo primero que me venga a la mente con ese algo y así hasta que me canse. Y luego de vuelta hasta volver al algo original.Este libro es algo así. Un hombre subiendo unas escaleras eléctricas y pensando en algo, ...
The 135 page escalator ride. Nicholson Baker puts us in the wandering mind of office-worker Howie as he reflects on past events, life changes such as learning to tie one's shoes and witnessing the end of milk home-delivery.The plot is thin but the reminisces and vignettes and footnotes are interesti...
Did not like this as much as The Anthologist, in part because it required reading voluminous footnotes in small print, which drives me almost as crazy as voluminous italics, but mostly because the narrative voice did not capture my ear like The Anthologist did. The entire book concerns the "reapprai...
Did not like this as much as The Anthologist, in part because it required reading voluminous footnotes in small print, which drives me almost as crazy as voluminous italics, but mostly because the narrative voice did not capture my ear like The Anthologist did. The entire book concerns the "reapprai...
I waffled on my rating. This is a 5 star book I think, but I didn't always feel like it was a 5 star read. My review is still percolating. I need to sort out the tension between Baker's less time-dependent ideas, and those that feel a bit like flies in amber.
Also read this for my class. I'm giving it a basic three stars for now because I enjoyed it but I'm not really sure what to think of it. I'll have to re-read it sometime when I have more than a week to do so. This is the kind of book that, even though it's short, can really be an overload all at onc...
Imagine Andy Rooney writing a novel, and you might come close to what this book by Nicholson Baker resembles. Because nothing really happens here. The protagonist goes to lunch to buy some shoelaces and returns, riding up to his office on the mezzanine level on the escalator. All of that (uhm, what ...
Okay, props to Baker for pulling off the experiment and keeping it interesting: all the story takes place in the course of an escalator ride. Okay, now can we stop? I'm tired to death of people writing experimental novels that recreate experiments of a hundred years ago. Seriously, this is what I...
Log in with Facebook 
