book club – may (supposed to be anyway)

We never did end up meeting to discuss our latest book selection, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers. All of the ladies were just too busy and I guess still are. Normally, I would wait until we met up to post a review but I think it’s been so long that we’ll probably just pick a new book.

David Eggers appears to be the brains behind an odd website called McSweeney’s and its associated publications. I’d heard of the site before through a Facebook friend but I have to admit that while some of it’s funny, I don’t get most of it.

And that same “I don’t get it” feeling applied consistently to his memoir.

Of course, there’s the fact that he was only 30 when he wrote his memoir which I find a little suspect and self-indulgent. But apparently this is the new thing for young up-and-coming authors. Is it that they don’t have anything else to write about except themselves?

But seriously, I didn’t get it.

In doing a little wiki-research, the bones of the story are, in fact, true but the way he tells the story, it’s hard to figure out what is supposed to have happened, who/what is real, and what in the blazes is going on. It was so convoluted and, at times, utterly ridiculous that I had to mentally drag myself to the end. I’m a dedicated book club reader so drag myself I did and I did not feel rewarded for my efforts.

It kind of reminded me of something Augusten Borroughs or David Sedaris would write. I don’t particularly care for either of them – for similar “I don’t get it” reasons. I really don’t like books that I don’t feel like I understand. It’s probably a personal problem.

Another part of the problem for me was that I felt that this was the 3^rd similar memoir type book that we’ve read since I joined the book club: You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas by Augusten Burroughs (review posted here) and Not Quite What I Was Planning edited by Larry Smith (review posted here). I’m a fiction girl for the most part so even though I enjoyed NQWIWP, 2 memoirs in as many years is probably enough for me much less 3 in six months.

Needless to say, I’m planning to have a few fictional suggestions in mind next time we meet up. If we meet up. Have we unintentionally killed the group?