Infinite Summer
balltillifall:
I woke up early this morning and fueled by a large pot of coffee powered through the last 50 pages of Infinite Jest. I really, really liked reading it. It was unlike any other book I had ever read and reading it was in itself a really unique experience. I don’t think it’s ever taken me a quarter of a year to read a book before and there were definitely times when it was a slog to get through, but in the end it was very worth it. It’s an epic, beautiful, brilliant book and one that’s worth the time and effort to read.
I’m elated at the prospect of starting new books though. I had come to the feeling that I had always been reading Infinite Jest, it was hard for me to imagine a time when I wasn’t. I’ll be excited to be able to finish a book in a few days again.
Amen. I remember what it was like to finish it, want to flip to the beginning and start over, but mostly the freedom I was given to start other books again.
Amazon.com: Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town (9781596916500): Nick Reding: Books
Just finished this book yesterday (on my Kindle*) and have to say it wasn’t quite satisfying. Perhaps I had high hopes (having been led to it by a friend) for some true A&E style Meth stories, but was instead confronted with a very surface level basic sociology study on Meth in small-town middle American - none of which was shocking or largely informative.
It’s obvious that Reding has potential to be a good writer, but he struggles to get past cliches here and every feels glossed over. When there’s opportunity to swap stories with the local sheriff, there’s only one paragraph devoted to it. Each character comes and goes and fades into the arch of the book without ever being really memorable.
I wanted more, instead I got middle of the road. It doesn’t become an indictment of the mishandling of the US drug war (like this one or this RS article) or an exciting drug memoir / addition porn (like this one) or even an expose into the production/sale of the drug (this one), or just even an exciting sociological take on the epidemic (like this).
Instead it tries to be all of these things and doesn’t get very far in any of those directions. I’d skip the hype and try one of the others I mentioned instead.
*PS: I found myself saddled with a little bit of cognitive dissonance after paying more ($4!) for the Kindle version than the available paperback version. I’ll accept paying more than $9.99, but don’t set the paperback version lower than the Kindle version price because that tells me you’re willing to sell at that price point. I’d be angrier if I had wanted to share the book with friends.
237 pages and 67 endnotes left in the biggest literary undertaking thus far of my post-graduate life.
