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The Four-Day Weekend
Meet Henry and friends since forever, manga and anime fans, and dead sick of the daily grind. Henry’s girlfriend of four years just walked out on him after a dumb argument about salad dressing and Cowboy Bebop. Winthrop’s burned out on his comic store — paradise when you’re nineteen, but maybe not when you’re thirty-six. What’s left but to rent a car and a hotel room, gather some friends together, get dressed up as video-game characters and head south to drink in the biggest fan convention this side of the Missouri? Then into both of their lives comes crashing Diane, who’s never seen an episode of Dragonball Z in her life and neither reads nor can spell Shonen Jump. A “mundane”. And as it turns out, she might need someone like them just as much as they need someone like her.
306 pages, Trade Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
14 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 13, 2015
I've never been to any kind of Con
But this book totally makes me want to! I could not put this down and blazed through it in one day's binge. Fantastic writing!
But this book totally makes me want to! I could not put this down and blazed through it in one day's binge. Fantastic writing!
November 3, 2010
Serdar Yegulalp, The Four-Day Weekend (Genji Press, 2008)
In the interests of full disclosure, I've known Serdar Yegulalp (online, anyway) for over a decade now, since back in the days when we were both still unleashing harsh, brutal noise on unsuspecting audiences at mp3.com. Here we are eleven and a half years later and while I'm still doing the noise thing, Serdar, formerly a journalist/columnist, has moved on to doing something I've always wanted to do: writing novels. As soon as I found out they existed, I knew I'd be reading one sooner or later. I decided to make it sooner and picked up The Four-Day Weekend. Which is about how long it took me to blow through it. And before I get started gushing about it, I have two things to say, one of them quite long. I apologize in advance.
First off, which may save you from actually having to read the review: I get the feeling that if you're actually in some way involved in the con scene—but not too far involved—you will get a lot more out of this book than you would if you're either (a) drenched in it or (b) not at all interested. I hope that's not the case, but that's how it comes off to me.
The second is something I wonder about every time I pick up a vanity-published novel written by someone I know—does the fact that I know this person affect the way I see the book? I look back at the ratings and reviews I've given to books written by people I know, and I am convinced I've looked at a few of them through rose-colored glasses. I do like to think (or provide myself with the illusion) that my knowing that I'm struggling with giving better reviews to people I know keeps me more objective than I would otherwise be, whether it's true or not. So you can probably take everything I have to say here with a grain of salt, but simply put: I loved this book like a fat kid loves cake. And I should know, I'm a fat kid who had a birthday earlier this week.
Now that I think about it, that last paragraph is actually a more interesting plot summary than any plot summary I could give you (I mean jeez, just look at the product description already). Henry, our main character, is a cerebral piece of work. Some might say obsessively so. And he ends up thinking about stuff a lot in this book, thinking about it along those same lines, taking previous experiences and mapping them somewhat neurotically onto present situations. That is probably the sternest warning I can give you; this is a book that does a lot of telling, rather than showing. We spend a great deal of time inside Henry's head as he processes the things around him. If that will make you shy away from this book, then feel free to shy away. But let me tell you first that I am one of the world's most obsessive proponents of “show, don't tell”, and I wasn't bothered by it, because whenever Henry isn't processing, he's reporting. Yegulalp obviously isn't using “tell don't show” because he doesn't know any better, because he's quite capable of showing when he wants to, and doing it very very well. Thus, he has another reason for doing it, and as they say, intent is everything.
I should also mention that this is basically a plotless book; the title tells you a great deal of what you need to know, as Henry and Winthrop hit a four-day con and do con stuff. There's the added bonus of Diane, who Henry finds in their hotel lobby after being ditched by her boyfriend. And she's obviously an instrument, the outsider seeing a con for the first time, but what an instrument she is. And that is because Yegulalp is capable of drawing real characters in a way that not too many writers are; character detailing is a fine art indeed, and I forget that sometimes until I read someone who's capable of building real characters. Henry and Winthrop and Diane and Tom and Lisa and Alexei are not two-dimensional by any means, but Yegulalp doesn't go all the way over the cliff and turn the characters into equally simple collections of neuroses, which so many authors do when trying to create three-dimensional characters. Paradoxically, the best example of Yegulalp's attention to detail is in Tom, the most minor of the six main characters the book has; he gets far fewer pages than anyone else, but he is just as fleshed-out as Henry or Winthrop, who get the most face time. I like that in a book. Very much.
Not to say it doesn't have a flaw or two. As is common in vanity pubs, the proofreading gets a touch lax towards the end of the book. And if the ending is predictable, Yegulalp takes the idea of the red herring and stands it on its head, taking what was previously a minor plotline and turning it into the book's real climax. It's a monster. (But then, if you think about it, does some as cerebral as Henry really deserve to be a climactic character?)
When I do look at books through rose-colored glasses, I tend to give them grudging 2.5-3 type ratings and give you the old “it's not that bad” speech. None of that here. This book is awesome. I loved it. It will most probably end up on my 25 Best Reads of the Year list in a couple of months. Buy this. Read it. **** ½
In the interests of full disclosure, I've known Serdar Yegulalp (online, anyway) for over a decade now, since back in the days when we were both still unleashing harsh, brutal noise on unsuspecting audiences at mp3.com. Here we are eleven and a half years later and while I'm still doing the noise thing, Serdar, formerly a journalist/columnist, has moved on to doing something I've always wanted to do: writing novels. As soon as I found out they existed, I knew I'd be reading one sooner or later. I decided to make it sooner and picked up The Four-Day Weekend. Which is about how long it took me to blow through it. And before I get started gushing about it, I have two things to say, one of them quite long. I apologize in advance.
First off, which may save you from actually having to read the review: I get the feeling that if you're actually in some way involved in the con scene—but not too far involved—you will get a lot more out of this book than you would if you're either (a) drenched in it or (b) not at all interested. I hope that's not the case, but that's how it comes off to me.
The second is something I wonder about every time I pick up a vanity-published novel written by someone I know—does the fact that I know this person affect the way I see the book? I look back at the ratings and reviews I've given to books written by people I know, and I am convinced I've looked at a few of them through rose-colored glasses. I do like to think (or provide myself with the illusion) that my knowing that I'm struggling with giving better reviews to people I know keeps me more objective than I would otherwise be, whether it's true or not. So you can probably take everything I have to say here with a grain of salt, but simply put: I loved this book like a fat kid loves cake. And I should know, I'm a fat kid who had a birthday earlier this week.
Now that I think about it, that last paragraph is actually a more interesting plot summary than any plot summary I could give you (I mean jeez, just look at the product description already). Henry, our main character, is a cerebral piece of work. Some might say obsessively so. And he ends up thinking about stuff a lot in this book, thinking about it along those same lines, taking previous experiences and mapping them somewhat neurotically onto present situations. That is probably the sternest warning I can give you; this is a book that does a lot of telling, rather than showing. We spend a great deal of time inside Henry's head as he processes the things around him. If that will make you shy away from this book, then feel free to shy away. But let me tell you first that I am one of the world's most obsessive proponents of “show, don't tell”, and I wasn't bothered by it, because whenever Henry isn't processing, he's reporting. Yegulalp obviously isn't using “tell don't show” because he doesn't know any better, because he's quite capable of showing when he wants to, and doing it very very well. Thus, he has another reason for doing it, and as they say, intent is everything.
I should also mention that this is basically a plotless book; the title tells you a great deal of what you need to know, as Henry and Winthrop hit a four-day con and do con stuff. There's the added bonus of Diane, who Henry finds in their hotel lobby after being ditched by her boyfriend. And she's obviously an instrument, the outsider seeing a con for the first time, but what an instrument she is. And that is because Yegulalp is capable of drawing real characters in a way that not too many writers are; character detailing is a fine art indeed, and I forget that sometimes until I read someone who's capable of building real characters. Henry and Winthrop and Diane and Tom and Lisa and Alexei are not two-dimensional by any means, but Yegulalp doesn't go all the way over the cliff and turn the characters into equally simple collections of neuroses, which so many authors do when trying to create three-dimensional characters. Paradoxically, the best example of Yegulalp's attention to detail is in Tom, the most minor of the six main characters the book has; he gets far fewer pages than anyone else, but he is just as fleshed-out as Henry or Winthrop, who get the most face time. I like that in a book. Very much.
Not to say it doesn't have a flaw or two. As is common in vanity pubs, the proofreading gets a touch lax towards the end of the book. And if the ending is predictable, Yegulalp takes the idea of the red herring and stands it on its head, taking what was previously a minor plotline and turning it into the book's real climax. It's a monster. (But then, if you think about it, does some as cerebral as Henry really deserve to be a climactic character?)
When I do look at books through rose-colored glasses, I tend to give them grudging 2.5-3 type ratings and give you the old “it's not that bad” speech. None of that here. This book is awesome. I loved it. It will most probably end up on my 25 Best Reads of the Year list in a couple of months. Buy this. Read it. **** ½
June 26, 2009
This is an insider novel about an outsider culture ("The Otaku Generation finally gets its own novel," says the back cover blurb). The author definitely knows Masamune Shirow from Katsuhiro Otomo. But for all his enthusiasm, he can't convince me that this particular four-day weekend is any different than any other four-day weekend. Likewise, the anime-lovin' characters don't exactly jump off the page with any degree of complexity or wit either. Honestly, I think any of my coworkers could have written a better novel about the "Otaku Generation"...whatever that is.
October 12, 2010
While it may not be engaging to a non-anime fan, it gains my points for being very truthful about the wonderful and fun atmosphere of a convention.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews