How did you experience the book?

[Jen]

What was your experience reading this book? Did you enjoy it, dislike it, etc. What kinds of feelings and reactions did you have while reading it.

[Tracy]

It was an experience, and it was consuming. I normally would never take this long to read a book, but it was necessary with this one, and worth it. A week after finishing, I was attacked by a feral hamster in a dream (an experience I hope not to have again, especially in real life). I laughed so many times, but mostly I marveled at how this book can be interpreted so many ways.

[Diane]

I, too, felt similarly to Tracy. It is definitely an experience and definitely took longer to read than most books of its size. I started to get antsy toward the end since I was not making any other progress on other books. I started to disengage and want it to end which is not typical for me in longer books. Usually I don't want them to ever end. Perhaps I was starting to get mentally exhausted.

[Pip]

I finished earlier this evening and am still feeling a bit dazed by the experience. I loved it and was frustrated by it. It was a challenge, but an enjoyable one. The only comparable experience was Ulysses, I think.

[Patrick]

I just loved it and, I swear, I could feel some withdrawal symptoms from it. So dense, so detailed, so funny, so challenging. I am sure that one day I will through it again and find a lot of stuff I didn't realise at first. Not as intellectually challenging as Ulysses, but definitely not for the faint-hearted.

[[deleted user]]

There were points I really enjoyed, points I found hysterically funny and points that were just mind numbingly boring.

Overall I enjoyed the book but I was frustrated by the ending.

[Kristel]

I would have to agree with Book. While I enjoyed some of this book, others were just a lot of drudgery. I am so glad to be done. I will now have to figure out how to write a review about it.

[John]

Overall I enjoyed the book, though it was a chore*. It weighs in at 1,000 pages, but that is only because they are good sized pages and densely packed. It read much longer than A Suitable Boy, which weighed in at nearly 1,500 pages. The machinations surrounding junior tennis were interesting at first, but became wearing. The descriptions of addiction and recovery were terrifyingly real and compelling. While some of the humor was side-splittingly funny, much of it reminded me of Seinfeld, a style of humor I don't find very* funny and that I have come to refer to as self-reverential. I am sure that I would get more out of it in second reading, but I doubt I will ever do it.

*typos fixed

[Patrick]

John wrote: "Overall I enjoyed the book, though it was a choir. It weighs in at 1,000 pages, but that is only because they are good sized pages and densely packed. It read much longer than [book:A Suitable Boy|..."

A "choir"? Has DFW influenced you so much that now you indulge in play on words? ;-)

[Kristel]

LOL, great catch, I read John's comment and never even caught it.

[John]

Patrick wrote: "John wrote: "Overall I enjoyed the book, though it was a choir. It weighs in at 1,000 pages, but that is only because they are good sized pages and densely packed. It read much longer than [book:A ..."

I've long enjoyed word play, as you know, and the word play was one of the things I really liked about it. That was just a typo.