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This book was easy to read, and it quickly pulled me into the tragicomic lives of employees an advertising agency.

Those of us who are alumni of corporate cube-land can relate to what happens in this novel: these people thrive on rumors, they flock to free food in the kitchen, they break up their idle chitchat whenever the boss comes by, they parse everything management says to search for hidden meanings, they go to lunch, they play pratical jokes, they take offense.

"These people will believe anything. They will say anything."

Initially funny, the tone gets darker as employees are let go (or "walked Spanish," a terrific idiom). Unfortunately, having a large cast of characters means our knowledge of them is limited (apart from a poignant interlude that focuses on Lynn Mason, the boss).

This book was a great reflection on where white-collar working class America finds itself after the dot-com collapse and 9/11.

This book was easy to read, and it quickly pulled me into the tragicomic lives of employees an advertising agency.

Those of us who are alumni of corporate cube-land can relate to what happens in this novel: these people thrive on rumors, they flock to free food in the kitchen, they break up their idle chitchat whenever the boss comes by, they parse everything management says to search for hidden meanings, they go to lunch, they play pratical jokes, they take offense.

"These people will believe anything. They will say anything."

Initially funny, the tone gets darker as employees are let go (or "walked Spanish," a terrific idiom). Unfortunately, having a large cast of characters means our knowledge of them is limited (apart from a poignant interlude that focuses on Lynn Mason, the boss).

This book was a great reflection on where white-collar working class America finds itself after the dot-com collapse and 9/11.

Sorry, I just can't deal with the anguish of Catholicism in this book. I gave up about halfway through.

This book was like reading a nightmare version of John Lennon's "Imagine" - no religion, no heaven, and no hell below us - there's no hell below because we're in hell now!

We're in hell with the whisky priest and his unfortunate giggles. We witness creepy interactions between characters: "he gently squeezed the other's polished shoe with his bare toes." We're in the pit of a prison...where I will leave the whisky priest and his search for redemption.

Started: August 16, 2010
Gave up: August 21, 2010

Sorry, I just can't deal with the anguish of Catholicism in this book. I gave up about halfway through.

This book was like reading a nightmare version of John Lennon's "Imagine" - no religion, no heaven, and no hell below us - there's no hell below because we're in hell now!

We're in hell with the whisky priest and his unfortunate giggles. We witness creepy interactions between characters: "he gently squeezed the other's polished shoe with his bare toes." We're in the pit of a prison...where I will leave the whisky priest and his search for redemption.

Started: August 16, 2010
Gave up: August 21, 2010

I guess I expected more out of a Pulitzer Prize winner. It didn't take my breath away (as did [b:Tinkers|8841028|tinkers|Paul Harding|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|13715812]); The Stone Diaries wasn't awful, but I didn't find it "distinguished."

One feature of this book is the narrator's voice. The life of Daisy Goodwill Flett is told primarily in the third person, but in a few instances, Daisy sneaks in a first-person comment and we find that it's Daisy herself who is telling the story. One (very good) chapter is told completely in correspondence to Daisy--we never see her letters, only those addressed to her. Oddly, for an autobiographical account, we are left to reconstruct events without hearing from the narrator, and I found the section very compelling.

In keeping with the title, some characters have an affinity for rocks (one is a stonecutter; another builds a miniature pyramid). Other people are interested in plants. The "rock" folks are "dense, heavy" (page 135), but one-dimensional. The "plant" people grow, blossom, and then die. Pretty blunt symbolism. Which is Daisy? Well, her name and interests tag her as a "plant" person but her personality is "rock."

The book includes Daisy's family tree and photographs of various family members. (In an interview, Carol Shields noted that the photos of Daisy's grandchildren are of her own children.) One problem with family trees is that they show only "official" relatives. The family tree format does Daisy a disservice by excluding her virtual sisters, her friends Fraidy and Beans. These chums are Daisy's only peers in the story. Daisy seemed the most "herself" with these two...or perhaps I'm bringing my own friendships into the equation!

I guess I expected more out of a Pulitzer Prize winner. It didn't take my breath away (as did [b:Tinkers|8841028|tinkers|Paul Harding|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|13715812]); The Stone Diaries wasn't awful, but I didn't find it "distinguished."

One feature of this book is the narrator's voice. The life of Daisy Goodwill Flett is told primarily in the third person, but in a few instances, Daisy sneaks in a first-person comment and we find that it's Daisy herself who is telling the story. One (very good) chapter is told completely in correspondence to Daisy--we never see her letters, only those addressed to her. Oddly, for an autobiographical account, we are left to reconstruct events without hearing from the narrator, and I found the section very compelling.

In keeping with the title, some characters have an affinity for rocks (one is a stonecutter; another builds a miniature pyramid). Other people are interested in plants. The "rock" folks are "dense, heavy" (page 135), but one-dimensional. The "plant" people grow, blossom, and then die. Pretty blunt symbolism. Which is Daisy? Well, her name and interests tag her as a "plant" person but her personality is "rock."

The book includes Daisy's family tree and photographs of various family members. (In an interview, Carol Shields noted that the photos of Daisy's grandchildren are of her own children.) One problem with family trees is that they show only "official" relatives. The family tree format does Daisy a disservice by excluding her virtual sisters, her friends Fraidy and Beans. These chums are Daisy's only peers in the story. Daisy seemed the most "herself" with these two...or perhaps I'm bringing my own friendships into the equation!

Senhor Jose is employed as a low-level clerk in the bureaucratic Central Registry. By chance, he undertakes a quest: to track down information about a woman whose name he learns by accident.

His world is small (he is "convinced that the rest of the world follows the same deductive path as he does"), and he ventures further and further afield in search of information about the mystery woman. Senhor Jose has difficulties with personal relationships, and is not particularly intent on actually meeting the woman of his quest. He'd rather know about her than know her.

(Spoiler warning: Skip this paragraph if you don't want to learn a key plot point. Senhor Jose's inquiries may have precipitated the woman's suicide, yet he never confronts this possibility.)

To Senhor Jose, a life's value is proven if it is documented. He says, "Anyway, the fact stands recorded," as if recordation is evidence enough of meaning. And yet, at the end, Senhor Jose finds that human beings end up nameless (and numberless), with documentation being meaningless.

My regard for Senhor Jose went from sympathy to amusement to something like dismay. The story turned into a religious allegory (come on, hit us over the head with it…a shepherd, and sheep?).

Saramago's writing style is notable in that he uses run-on paragraphs and comma splices, rather than quotation marks, to identify conversation. While not quite stream of consciousness, we do get a flow of ideas. I didn't find this style difficult to follow, but it did require careful reading.

I really should get credit for reading two separate books. One storyline involved the creation of a whiz-bang virtual reality "Cavern" by a well-funded lab in the Pacific Northwest. The other story focused on the kidnapping of an American in Lebanon.

I found the speechifying by the VR programmers to be unrealistic and rather dull.

The kidnapping saga generally held my interest but towards the end, I found myself skipping sections.

The two storylines do eventually come together, barely, in a science fictiony way that was an unconvincing jolt from the previous 400 realistic pages.

I really should get credit for reading two separate books. One storyline involved the creation of a whiz-bang virtual reality "Cavern" by a well-funded lab in the Pacific Northwest. The other story focused on the kidnapping of an American in Lebanon.

I found the speechifying by the VR programmers to be unrealistic and rather dull.

The kidnapping saga generally held my interest but towards the end, I found myself skipping sections.

The two storylines do eventually come together, barely, in a science fictiony way that was an unconvincing jolt from the previous 400 realistic pages.

I think - intentionally - Dave Eggers used an unemotional journalistic tone to tell us about Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun. As a result, I felt like I was a distant observer, watching a documentary about the chaos of New Orleans during and following Hurricane Katrina...until the last third of the book, when Abdulrahman ends up falsely imprisoned. It sounded just a little too much like the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. What happened to the Zeitouns should not have happened, and it's a sad, sad commentary on this country that it's easier to be afraid than it is to protect our civil rights.

I think - intentionally - Dave Eggers used an unemotional journalistic tone to tell us about Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun. As a result, I felt like I was a distant observer, watching a documentary about the chaos of New Orleans during and following Hurricane Katrina...until the last third of the book, when Abdulrahman ends up falsely imprisoned. It sounded just a little too much like the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. What happened to the Zeitouns should not have happened, and it's a sad, sad commentary on this country that it's easier to be afraid than it is to protect our civil rights.

If I liked Infinite Jest enough to give it 4 stars, then why did it take me almost 9 months to finish?

Some of this novel is just brilliant, and some of it went off the rails.

What's brilliant? In general, just about everything in the second half: Hal Incandenza at the "Inner Infant" meeting. Ortho Stice (yes, that's his name) stuck to the dormitory window. Don Gately in the hospital. The absurdity of the advertising industry.

I almost got defeated in the middle of the book, wondering how/if the rambling storylines were going to come together. Enough already with Remy Marathe and Hugh/Helen Steeply and the Quebec separatists. Enough with Mario Incandenza's film about the establishment of ONAN (Organization of North American Nations – Canada, US and Mexico), as enacted by puppets. Enough with Eschaton! I admit it…I started skipping text.

This is not a book to pick up and read when you have a spare 5 minutes. "Cast of thousands" may be just a slight understatement. One character "had a terrible time ever separating details from what was really important to a story." Did author DFW have this problem?

The language can be flowing and easy to read, and then suddenly turn into a swamp of goo. We get into the characters' heads with slang and vernacular ("Night Errand" for knight errant; if you "eliminate someone's map," you kill them). I was completely comfortable with shorthand ("w/r/t") and a clever use of typography to convey silence ('…'). Then there are numbing technical descriptions of the chemical composition of drugs, copyright/trademark attribution, rambling thought bubbles, and endnotes. Endnotes that point to other endnotes, even.

The book took work. After reading the last chapter, I had to re-read the first chapter to get a glimmer of understanding about what happened to Hal (the opening, it turns out, is a flash forward: it takes place after the rest of the story). Unlike with conventional novels, we never get the complete picture about several characters. (Why is Joelle veiled? What is with The Entertainment? How did Orin get into that glass cage, and will he get out? Will Hal be ok?) There's nothing wrong with working while reading; it actually felt good to put forth a mental effort. I think it's a compliment to the book that I'm still putting the pieces together, days after I finished it.

Overshadowing the entire reading experience was the fact that DFW, who suffered from depression, killed himself a few years ago. Several characters in IJ commit or contemplate suicide. During these passages, I had to wonder how much of author's voice leaked into the narration. Perhaps DFW, not Hal, is speaking these lines: "I cannot make myself understood…I am not what you see and hear."