Brook read and liked Polly's review of A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius:

"look. it's cool to hate on dave eggers.

it's *so cool* to be post-dave-eggers, and talk about how you didn't really like this book all that much, and it's even cooler to totally hate this book. it's like a coolness interview question. ...more look. it's cool to hate on dave eggers.

it's *so cool* to be post-dave-eggers, and talk about how you didn't really like this book all that much, and it's even cooler to totally hate this book. it's like a coolness interview question. "did you like his book?" "yeah, I really did." "well, we can't be friends with *you*..."

this is just like those hipsters who don't like justin timberlake. fuck you, hipsters. that new album is solid gold.

I loved this book. I loved it, and I still love it. I wish to god I had sent away for the optional large-scale flow chart. at one point in my life, I had several (*several*) copies of this book, and I gave them away and lent them out and now I have none. one of those copies was practically destroyed with the underlining and highlighting and dog-earing-of-pages I practiced on it. I wish to god I still had that one.

and listen, cool kids. deep in the uncool heart of you, you loved it too. so step off.



(less) "

Brook read and liked Bryon's review of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius:

"I had problems with Dave Eggers for a long time. Having never read a word he'd written, I immaturely thought I had every right to hate him. He was young, successful, and adored by critics. That was enough right there. When it first came out, I would ...more I had problems with Dave Eggers for a long time. Having never read a word he'd written, I immaturely thought I had every right to hate him. He was young, successful, and adored by critics. That was enough right there. When it first came out, I would see AHWOSG in the bookstore and grimace at it (more than once, I even gave it the evil eye). My loathing was out of sheer jealousy. I recognized it as such back then, but still carried on. It's hard to let go of things sometimes.

OK. Fast forward three or four years. I still have a lot of pent up animosity for those writers who are so far ahead of me. However, this fear, thinly cloaked as a juicy eccentricity has dissipated a great deal upon reading Eggers' triumphant, naked, brutally pure and dramatically veracious window into a life bereft of normalcy.

What is normalcy? Nobody knows (and quite frankly, nobody should care), but I'll tell you what it's not: having to deal with the death of both your parents within mere months of each other. That just doesn't happen to people. On the rare and awful occassions when it does, the children involved are devastated. It happened to Eggers and his siblings. When his mother died, he was left to share custody of his younger brother Toph. Still just a child, Toph grew up under the sometimes bizarre, always concerned eye of his older brother Dave.

The center of AHWOSG is truly the great and hilarious relationship Eggers has with Toph. To try to describe how they both grew up together in the strange and bumpy post-parental freedom-for-all (with strict rules of obtaining said freedom) would be detrimental to the experiences you can have in Eggers' world. So we won't venture further. Rest assured, there's a seal-tight bond there, one few can probably relate to.

Smirking just on the borders of the author's fatherly/brotherly/friendly/loving/do-right-for-the-little-jerk attitude is the fully-aware-of-everything-that-is-and-is-not persona that he is constantly invoking and daring to take him just one step further... just to the brink... just to push him off. His emotions are bloody rare, like a T-Bone rippling with E. coli. His running, inner monologue and occasional tabooed thoughts are cut from his heart with a dull spork and served to the reader à la mode--as if the sweet, cold vanilla sub-thought could lighten the mood. It does. And his words never fail to render a heartbreaking, poetic, screaming justice for his soul.

I ate it up. I wanted more. I swallowed my jealousy and loved it.(less) "