Infinite Jest in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Feb 06, 2011 Crowinator rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adult, favorites-of-all-time, 2005-and-before-reads, genre-literary

I actually took a whole class on this book in college. I have two copies -- one hardcover signed by the author and one paperback full of my notes in the margins. I also have two notebooks full of notes as well, and several wordy English papers. I'm always meaning to read it again, without studying it so hard, and see what that changes, but it's always been an important book for me. Even the title of my Livejournal blog is a quotation from this book (Trapped Inside My Huge Chattering Head). ...more

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Jun 25, 2009 Juliezs rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: library, read-in-2009

This has been on my to=read list for a long while. It is huge (973 pages!) and unwieldy, and I already love it after 33 pages. I read a lot about the author when he recently committed suicide and he was compared to a lot of authors I enjoy (John Irving and Kurt Vonnegut for example). Hope I can finish it before the library wants it back!

I'm up to page 333 and am amazed by this book. There is a lot of pathos, humor, uncomfortable reality and the characters are so true to life. Still hoping to get ...more

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Jul 11, 2014 Jeff Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobooks, fiction, 20th-century-fiction, male, to-own

Infinite Jest is certainly one giant jigsaw puzzle of a book. When I first started it, I had no idea what was really going on. The first story includes Arizona, tennis, and consequences of drug addiction/self-destruction, which pretty much sums up the major themes of the book. I listened to this as an audiobook and also had the eBook version checked out. The audiobook does not read the end notes so I needed to have both to follow along. I think the attention to detail in listening to the audiobo ...more

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May 26, 2009 Alison marked it as unfinished · review of another edition

For Infinite Summer (http://www.infinitesummer.org/).

I got about 80 pages in and stalled out. I wasn't enjoying it at all -- so many characters and not any way to see how they would come together, if at all. I know 80 pages of this book doesn't make for very much of it, but I decided that since I wasn't reading it for school, I didn't need to keep going. ...more

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