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Aug 24, 2011

K.D. rated it:

My current best friend in the office is a half-Chinese lady. She, just like most Chinese in the Philippines, is proud of her Chinese blood. I cannot blame her. Chinese businessmen rule the economy of the country. Even the sitting president has Chinese blood in his veins. In short, pure Filipinos accept the fact that having to exist, or even to work for, with their fellow Filipinos with Chinese blood is a non-issue. In most cases, those Chinese-Filipinos are even better in mathematics and in runn More...

27 comments like (27 people liked it)

May 14, 2010

David rated it:

Gary Shteyngart has failed me. True, he probably wasn't aware that he had a responsibility to me, personally, but (in most cultures) ignorance of the law is seldom sufficient cause to dismiss the crime.

Shteyngart's crime is that he has written what appears to be an awful book. (I say 'what appears to be' because I didn't have the heart to finish it.*) Yes, as you well know, countless other writers have committed the same crime -- some even more gruesomely -- but most of these capita More...

34 comments like (102 people liked it)

Jul 08, 2011

Sandybanks rated it:

BookFiendUSA: I see that you’ve been reading Super Sad True Love Story. Cute title, big hype. What’s it about?

SandyBanks1971: It’s about this guy, Lenny Abramov, second-generation Russian Jewish-American, who is in his “very late thirties” and very bothered about it. He thinks that’s he’s a RAG who can’t get the girl anymore, and a failure in his job to get HNWIs to buy his company’s “life extension” programs.

BookFiendUSA: I know that HNWI is High Net Worth Individual --- More...

19 comments like (33 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2011

Ryan rated it:

I don't think I've ever been so happy to finish a book.

It's not that Super Sad True Love Story is a bad or boring book. It's quite intelligent and it's often funny (perhaps 'witty' would be a better adjective for a New York Times darling like Shteyngart). However, this book is just super sad. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the working title was "super, super, sad story."

Shteyngart has created a "dystopian" America, but readers won't have to try ve More...

3 comments like (14 people liked it)

Jul 22, 2011

James rated it:

My favorite quote was "In short I felt paternal and aroused, which is not a good combination."
I wish I could meet Gary Shteyngart just to tell him to stay the fuck away from my daughter.

Short version: it's unrelatable. Don't read it.

I found this book through a blog post where the author used quotes from SSTLS to describe how he felt he was less and less creative every year since graduating college, a feeling with which I could sympathize, but the main char More...

2 comments like (16 people liked it)

Jun 07, 2011

Laura rated it:

I'm distressed to even be writing a review on one of the many social networking sites that consume us now given the bleak future such activity is leading us towards. If you ask people to friend you or if you use text as a verb, you should skip this book. If you ponder which designer to wear or carry will make the best impression to others, skip this book. If you find "joy" in "communicating" via something you typed by thumb or via some shallow site like Facebook, then ther More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Sep 23, 2010

Dana rated it:

This is speculative fiction that is completely on target when it comes to current feelings about the Internet, economics, politics AND youth culture. It’s like Shteyngart took Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget,” all your worst nightmares about the Tea Party, your yuppie friends who keep their faces buried in their iPhones at the bar, your recent revelation that Facebooking is the loneliest part of your day, and your strict immigrant parents, and wrote a love story.

The part that t More...

0 comments like (36 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2011

Kemper rated it:

Oh, did I read this book at the exact wrong time of my life.

It's about a thirty-nine year old guy who is quickly losing what small traces of cool he ever had to middle-age as he is relentlessly mocked by a youth culture that finds him old, disgusting and out of touch.

I’m forty, very nearly forty-one. I don‘t like Twitter. I don’t know who half the celebrities referenced in the news are any more. (What the hell is a Snooki??) I got a painful case of bursitis seconds a More...

34 comments like (58 people liked it)

Dec 28, 2011

Marieke rated it:

i think if i had read the actual book, i would give it three stars--a strong three stars. but i listened to the audio version, which was a heck of a lot of fun. the two narrators were awesome. that's all i'm going to say about it. oh, actually, that's not true. i want to say one thing about it. it was really funny to listen to it right now, rather than last year when it was published--because of our government's budget crisis and impending debt ceiling debacle. if anything, Shteyngart has prepar More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Apr 15, 2011

Emily rated it:

Gary Shteyngart has staked out a spot for himself on my shelf next to David Sedaris, Sandra Cisneros, Harryette Mullen, the Xenophobe's Guides, Nutella, balsamic vinegar chips, and all my other comfort foods. His books are oddly-shaped jars of stuff I KNOW is alway going to be good in that loving, familiar way sung about in the opening credits of "Cheers." Just a few pages into his latest novel, I knew who Lenny was, and I swear he winked at me. I didn't like Eunice, but I had to ad More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 07, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

This book started out with a bang, quick-witted, fast-paced writing involving a futuristic America whose scenarios are not a lot different than some of the possible scenarios I picture in my head for our future. America's bankrupt with checkpoints at every block and given in to all encompassing youth and retail without an iota of pretense, where you walk by poles that announce your credit rating, where girls wear onion skin jeans and where we all have apparat's, ipad like devices, that constant More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 21, 2011

Bart rated it:

I generally don’t like science fiction. I don’t much like explicit political commentary in novels either. And when the two are mixed—loud political commentary communicated via a dystopian future-world, it comes across as hyperbolic and adolescent.

So, it’s with surprise that I write that that this is a pretty good futuristic novel chalked with smart political commentary. The Israel Security State. The American Restoration Association. Fuckabilty Ratings. This is some witty-ass, cleve More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 14, 2011

Haley rated it:

Shteyngart's bizarro-world version of the not-so-distant future of America is tough to swallow--sometimes because it's just too obscene and outlandish to be true, and other times because certain aspects are so painfully familiar. There are lots of difficult messages about the state of our country this book is trying to send, but for me it was ultimately about complacency and fear; all the times we look away from injustice just to give ourselves a little peace of mind; all the ethical and moral c More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 27, 2010

Doug rated it:

Super Sad True Love Story reminded me in bits and pieces of several other near future satire/dystopias (all of which I thought were more successful), among them Wallace's Infinite Jest and Hal Hartley's film The Girl from Monday, but most of all David Marusek's Counting Heads. Marusek's book is much more science fiction-y and action-oriented, but the two novels share a self-consciously anachronistic narrative viewpoint and a mix of realistic socio-technical extrapolation and credulity-straining More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2011

Mark rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2011

Casey rated it:

UPDATE: 1/2/11 - Random troll reminded me I had never done a full review of this book.

I had so many problems with this book I have trouble narrowing it down into something concise. The main character, Lenny Abraham, is just awful. Kind of sort of so is Gary Shteyngart. (Surprise! They're both children of Russian immigrants and I'd bet money that Gary lives in Manhattan. And by the end of the novel, both are published authors!) The book presents an America of the not-too-distant-future More...

20 comments like (20 people liked it)

May 26, 2011

Knowledge Lost rated it:

Super Sad True Love Story is a novel set in a very near future—oh, let’s say next Tuesday—where the world is dominated by Media and Retail. The story is centred on a thirty nine year Russian immigrant, Lenny, and what could likely be the world’s last diary. As well as the object of his affection; Eunice, who has her side of the story to by a collection of e-mail correspondences on her "GlobalTeens" account.

While this may be a story of a modern relationship; there is so much More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 27, 2010

Cameron rated it:

“Only spoiled white people could let something so good get so bad,” a character Verbals in Gary Shteyngart’s dystopian novel, SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY. The book’s about the America we’re creating with News Corp, Halliburton, shallow online media, and exploding debt. It’s an America where youth is coddled and worshiped—a post-literate age where students major in Images and Assertiveness; where American Idol has morphed into (the perhaps more American) American Spender; where a private militia ru More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 02, 2011

William Herschel rated it:

I was all wrong about this book. The thought of satire makes me feel like I'm left in an empty room all alone with the sound of receding laughter. Do you understand? But after awhile of actually reading it, I realized this isn't like that. The characters and events in the book are scarily relatable and the book was very much enhanced by group discussion.

I am very curious about how authors are tackling the internet in their work. I think Super Sad True Love Story did a good job of havin More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 02, 2011

Bill added it

“Super Sad True Love Story” is a clever, trenchant satire of our near future, poking fun at homeland security, social network communication, corporate culture, the degradation of language, youth obsession, first-generation-immigrant sensibilities, delusions of inferiority, religious observance, the coarsening of fashion, fiscal irresponsibility, privatization of state functions, bipartisanship, our portable computers, and senseless infatuation. None comes out unassailed. Shteyngart does it all More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 22, 2010

Bookmarks Magazine rated it:

If we are indeed as oversexed, consumer-obsessed, gadget-distracted and dangerously superficial as Gary Shteyngart paints us in his exuberant and devastating new novel...--and let's face it, we are--will such an acidly funny, prescient book be wasted on us? ponders the San Francisco Chronicle. If the critics' reactions are any indication, the answer is a resounding no. Juxtaposing Lenny's brooding diary entries with Eunice's self-absorbed text messages, Shteyngart crafts a chilling yet disturbin More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2012

Nader rated it:

At the center of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story is, of course, the love story, between the book's two principal characters (and narrators) Lenny Abramov and Eunice Park. The two of them are not always likable, but they both rang true for me, and held my interest throughout. Additionally, and more surprisingly, I was genuinely impressed with the world-building, which was abundant, innovative, often zany and smoothly integrated into the narrative. As might be expected from the p More...

0 comments like

Jan 22, 2012

Jane rated it:

I'm not really sure what to rate this book. I didn't particularly enjoy reading Super Sad True Love Story, but I liked it after I finished it. It was thought-provoking.

I liked Lenny. I liked Eunice. I liked the dystopian universe (or, rather, the concept of it). I liked how messed up everything and everyone was, because I like messed up things. But actually reading Super Sad True Love Story was kind of a huge drag. I'm probably just not smart enough. I absolutely don't believe that bo More...

0 comments like

Jan 16, 2012

Mallie rated it:

Dystopian, futuristic novel about what the US might be like if everything goes wrong over the next 20ish years. Lives revolve around Media and Credit. Amazing that this book was written in 2010 and so many of the things Gary Shteyngart predicted have come true!

Favorite Quotations:

Could this be more like Occupy Wall Street?
"They’re so organized here, it kind of reminds me of my family growing up. Everyone’s assigned a role, no matter how young or old, and everyon More...

0 comments like

Jan 15, 2012

Julie rated it:

What happens when an incredibly gifted writer takes a deep character study, throws in a cutting critique of society, and infuses the whole thing with hilarious depictions of what technology may do to us if we aren't careful? You get that rarest of creations: the literary scifi novel. There are no weird aliens, no superheroes and no magic wands in Super Sad True Love Story. Instead, Shteyngart brings us Manhattan in the very near future, where your credit rating is your calling card, the poor hav More...

0 comments like

Jan 13, 2012

Katherine rated it:

I didn't mean to rate this book as high as this. I didn't overly enjoy it while reading it. But it has stuck with me, coming to mind frequently, unlike any other book that I've read lately. This might be because I was able to read it in its entirety in one day. Took a slow boat from Sarasota to Mpls and had lots and lots of reading time.
The book was given to me by my 23 year old step-son. Imagine him on Christmas Eve day, trying to figure out what to get family members at Target. I bet More...

0 comments like

Jan 11, 2012

Bill rated it:

It's not that I'm not a fan of dystopia. When it's done right (Albert Brooks' 2030, the film Blade Runner and 1984, the granddaddy of them all), dystopia can be both fascinating and insightful. Shteyngart makes a great run at putting Super Sad in that pantheon, but it seems to run out of gas by the end. Creating a world where America is a slave to oversexed mega-consumerism, shouting talking heads as reliable news sources and our Chinese landlords, all in equal measure, Shteyngart constructs a f More...

0 comments like

Jan 09, 2012

Karl rated it:

this story set in a dystopic vision of america (not extremely far from present day reality), was quaint at times and more fully realized Russian Debutante's Handbook. Whereas RDH had a central protagonist, with a singular narrative, Super Sad captures diary entries, quasi-Facebook emails, and IM chats to tell the story.

The funniest parts are early entries from Lenny's girlfriend, a vapid young Korean with a relatively strict upbringing, who eyes everything from a consumer's viewpoi More...

0 comments like

Jan 02, 2012

Caitlin rated it:

I actually quite liked this, it was the ending that brought it round for me. The story starts out in a imagined American wasteland, with people absorbed in an even more addictive version of Facebook, sharing everything about themselves down to nutritional intake and credit information. Major corporations have absorbed each other, creating huge conglomerates that operate everything. However, a major disappointment for me was in the way Shteyngart relays the political turmoil - I never felt like i More...

0 comments like

Dec 10, 2011

Alvi rated it:

Don't get fool by this book title. It's more than just love story. In a very near future (hmm...perhaps that future is today as the story was written around 1984) a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don’t that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world’s last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called More...

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