Rating: 
Summary: The writing is just amazing
Review: Whatever else you think about this book, know this: the words, the rhythm, the humor, the fearlessness are all about as right on as it ever gets. Hemingway said something once (in Moveable Feast I think ) about feeling successful if he could write one true sentence every day. This book has enough true sentences in it to span years and years. Now. Can Dave Eggers do it again? I hope so. I really do.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting look at death and life
Review: While I can understand all the criticisms I've read of this book, I found it quite moving. And the MTV thing, well, frankly, I skimmed a few parts. Very funny at times (his sister's Kiss wedding), mature (no sniping about older siblings who seemed to have left him carrying the brunt of responsibility), and poignant (awkwardly scattering his mother's ashes), Eggers tells his deeply sad tale with a light enough hand so that it is never the depressing story it could be. The author and his little brother are a testament to just getting on with it.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly crafted ode to the love of his little bro.
Review: Superbly entertaining, masterfully crafted, poignant example of modern prose to come. While many shortsighted, or even jealous folks-angry their own lives are so boring, may get caught up in the sadness of his predicament, he doesn't..so why the hell should you? In fact, he sees the hilariousness of the human(American) condition so well, he can completely make fun of it.. himself.. and everyone else.. except of course Toph. Eggers, empowered by his own pain from his parents death, tries to protect,nurture and teach Toph, even accentuating key parts of his parent's lameness just so Toph won't miss out.. and most importantly keeping him from being a whining ... Everyone on this planet would want a big bro just like Eggers.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy award winner
Review: This is a beautiful book telling an ironic tale of a young man's inadiquate attempt to raise his younger brother after the death of their parents. The first chapter is one of the most difficult chapters that i have ever read, describing the parents ascent to death, but after that it lightens up telling a warm story of the strength of family in a flippant voice of twisted priority and inaduqacy. It is laugh out loud funny at times and difficultly sad at others. Many of you will be able to relate to many of the characters of the story as the are perfectly human-flawed. It is an moving piece of literature.
Rating: 
Summary: A letter to Dave
Review: Dave, I feel guilty for liking your book. I finally was moved to read it after I made a disparaging comment about it and then remembered, sheepishly, that I had only flipped through it in the store, hardly basis for dismissal. I'd heard it was preciously pomo, uberselfconscious, in love with itself, and usually I am opposed to such things, so I disliked it on principle, without even having read it. It wasn't that, upon reading it, I found there was no basis for these judgments. Oh there was. In fact, your "acknowledgments" section is boring, exhausting, entirely unfunny while obviously thinking it is. "This is a drawing of a stapler"? Do you think you're Faulkner (circa TS&TF, Dilsey section)? You're not.But you wrote a book about loss, abandonment, mangled families, and the SF Bay Area, all of which are beautiful and familiar to me, so I couldn't help being a little seduced. (Isn't it fitting that this review, which should be about your book, is really about me, i.e., my review is just as narcissistic as your book? Can't I flatter by imitating? Isn't it okay because I *know* that it's all about me, that I'm focusing inward when I should be focusing outward? Doesn't self-awareness excuse all sins, at least the sins of the heart and the pen, at least in your cosmology?) I didn't care about your weenie MightMagazine; the fate of your early efforts at satire is not as compelling as you and Toph, the death of your parents, and your book drags in those sections. You don't get to wriggle out of my apathy by saying you already know I don't care about the lives of you twenty somethings. It's cheating, Dave. It's lazy. For god's sake, don't be a such a slacker. But I did, oddly, like the MTV interview, that *was* relevant, with its catechismic echoes of the god of all lapsed Irish Catholic experimental writers, JJ, and it was fitting that you substituted The Real World for the Catholic Church, because, as you say (over and over; your book does get repetitive), we seek fame; fame is our ultimate authority, the new godlike bestower of validity, worth. In ULofB Kundera writes about the different kinds of eyes people seek (some the eyes of their beloved, some of God (?), some of the multitude), but maybe it's all been collapsed for us, the MTV generation, maybe the multitude's all that's left. But I don't know, I think I'm still a beloved kind of a gal. It was also fitting that in this catechism, rather than try to arrive at some external truth, you found still more opportunity to go in, in, in...is there any other direction for you?
Your humor becomes repetitive and nearly every joke in the narrative is arrived at the same way: by talking, writing, thinking your own neuroses into their most fanciful extremes: Toph will grow up to paint rainbows on pre-made ceramic cups and wear Tevas with socks! (I just made that one up). I know that humor. That's my humor, too. It's a little too easy. But when the book describes your interactions with Toph, the frequent employment of the word d---head, that's funny too, more so, and more real and more sweet, because it is (refreshingly) outside you, includes you, but is not in you. Your book was moving (though my heart remains intact), and there were things in it that were True about desire and grief. Maybe even in your relentless navel gazing/describing the lint you saw there, you showed some of us someone who was like us. Maybe you are speaking for a generation (I am younger, 22, not officially GenX, but who knows how we align ourselves and whether these feelings are only ours?) who can recognize itself in you. The material comfort (well, that's certainly not universal; I didn't even grow up with as much as you did, but I'm still not exactly screwing the lids on bottles in an assembly line) but still the grief, and even when there are reasons for it we suspect that there are no reasons for it; we are reduced to saying "it's chemical" because we fear we have no justification, no right. Is this what's left of the pageant and drama of our lives? Too much seratonin reuptake? I *know* that. I also know the reverse, the fear of contentment, security, the seeking of emotional danger, like we're bungee jumpers and can't get enough charge, juice, flow out of the normal course of our lives. And I know how it is when you write about feeling but never being able to get away from the awareness that you are feeling, and then the awareness of the awareness that you are feeling, I know the desire to enter into some operatic flight where there is nothing but feeling, no thought, only feeling, no awareness, only feeling. Is it only in observing someone *else* feeling that we can be authentic? Is that why you gave us this? Are you our sacrificial lamb, giving us your blood, allowing us to swallow you and thus know something beautiful without the self-consciousness that corrupts the beauty in our own lives? Is that what a writer does for us: takes on the burden (dare I say cross? Jesus, you're already on an ego trip) of the falsity of his work so we can revel, release in its truth? I don't know if the glimmer of recognition a reader feels is justification/praise for a novel (pardon me, a memoir). I don't know if everyone would feel this recognition. It's not the greatest art I've read, but I (we?) can identify with your struggle--to be not just cynical, self conscious, detached, ironic, tired, but also to be--please let us be--true of heart. I believe that you are true of heart.
Rating:
Summary: A letter to Dave
Review: Dave, I feel guilty for liking your book. I finally was moved to read it after I made a disparaging comment about it and then remembered, sheepishly, that I had only flipped through it, hardly basis for dismissing a book. I'd heard it was preciously pomo, uberselfconscious, in love with itself, and usually I am opposed to such things, so I disliked it on principle, without even having read it. It wasn't that, upon reading it, Ifound there was no basis for these judgments. Oh there was. In fact, your "acknowledgments" section is boring, exhausting, entirely unfunny while obviously thinking it is. "This is a drawing of a stapler"? Do you think you're Faulkner (circa TS&TF, Dilsey section)? You're not. But you wrote a book about loss, abandonment, mangled families, and the SF Bay Area, all of which are beautiful and familiar to me, so I couldn't help being a little seduced. (Isn't it fitting that this review, which should be about your book, is really about me, that my review is just as narcissistic as your book? Can't I flatter by imitating? And isn't it okay because I know that it's all about me, that I'm focusing inward when I should be focusing outward? Doesn't self-awareness excuse all sins, at least the sins of the heart and the pen, at least in your cosmology?) Sometimes your book is just annoying. I didn't care about your weenie MightMagazine; the fate of your early efforts at satire is not as compelling as you and Toph, the death of your parents, and your book drags in those sections. And you don't get to wriggle out of my apathy by saying you already know I don't care about the lives of you twenty somethings in your preface. It's cheating, Dave. It's lazy. For god's sake, don't be a such a slacker. But I did, oddly, like the MTV interview, that *was* relevant, with its catechismic echoes of that god of all lapsed Irish Catholic experimental writers, JJ, and it was fitting that you substituted The Real World for the Catholic Church, because, as you say (over and over (your book does get repetitive)), we seek fame, fame is our ultimate authority, the new godlike bestower of validity, worth. In ULofB Kundera writes about the different kinds of eyes people seek (some the eyes of their beloved, some of God (?), some of the multitude), but maybe it's all been collapsed for us, the MTV generation, maybe the multitude's all that's left. But I don't know, I think I'm still a beloved kind of a gal.) It was also fitting that (in this catechism), rather than try to arrive at some external truth, you found still more opportunity to go in, in, in...is there any other direction for you?
Your humor becomes repetitive and nearly every joke in the narrative is arrived at the same way: by talking, writing, thinking your own neuroses into their most fanciful extremes (Toph will grow up to paint rainbows on pre-made ceramic cups and wear Tevas with socks! (I just made that one up)). I know that humor. That's my humor, too. It's a little too easy. But when the book describes your interactions with Toph, including the frequent employment of the word d---head, that's funny too, more so, and more real and more sweet, because it is (refreshingly) outside you, includes you, but is not in you. Your book was moving (though my heart remains in tact), and there were things in it that were True about desire and grief. Maybe even in your relentless navel gazing/describing the lint you saw there, you showed some of us someone who was like us. Maybe you are speaking for a generation (I am younger, 22, not officially GenX, but who knows how we align ourselves and whether these feelings are only ours?) who can recognize itself in you. The material comfort (well, that's certainly not universal; I didn't even grow up with as much as you did, but I'm still not exactly screwing the lids on bottles in an assembly line) but still the grief, and even when there are reasons for it we suspect that there are no reasons for it; we are reduced to saying "it's chemical" because we fear we have no justification, no right. Is this what's left of the pageant and drama of our lives? Too much seratonin reuptake? I *know* that. I also know the reverse, the fear of contentment, security, the seeking of emotional danger, like we're bungee jumpers and can't get enough charge, juice, flow out of the normal course of our lives. And I know how it is when you write about feeling but never being able to get away from the awareness that you are feeling, and then the awareness of the awareness that you are feeling, I know the desire to enter into some operatic flight where there is nothing but feeling, no thought, only feeling, no awareness, only feeling. Is it only in observing someone *else* feeling that we can be authentic? Is that why you gave us this? Are you our sacrificial lamb, giving us your blood, allowing us to swallow you and thus know something beautiful without the self-consciousness that corrupts the beauty in our own lives? Is that what a writer does for us: take on the burden (dare I say cross? Jesus, you're already on an ego trip) of the falsity of his work so we can revel,release, in its truth? I don't know if the glimmer of recognition a reader feels is justification, praise for a novel (pardon me, a memoir). I don't know if everyone would feel this recognition. It's not the greatest art I've read, but I (we?) can identify with your struggle-to be not just cynical, self conscious, detached, ironic, tired, but also to be (please let us be) true of heart. I believe that you are true of heart.
Rating:
Summary: getting past the hype...
Review: there is much to admire in dave egger's touching memoir. his honesty about some really embarassing situations is commendable (even if he admitted after publication that it wasn't 100% accurate-- chalk that up to artistic license). unfortunately, there is also much to forgive. the whole section about MTV's 'The Real World' was so unashamedly self-important and arrogant. he could've removed about 40 pages of this book if at the onset he had just stated "let it be understood that i am a cool dude." these moments of hipster self-aggrandizing almost made me stop reading, but ultmately i'm glad i didn't. he claims to not be happy with these sections, which i suppose is some vindication, but i still feel some resentment that i was forced to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Insipidness
Review: Honestly, I really tried to read this novel and gave up around the 120th page. What do you get for buying this book: A daily minutiae/list of the writer's so-called (or "whatever")fictionalized life (a.k.a. laundry list) of moment to moment stuff of some insufferable post-Gen Xer's existence. So what, yawn. To write fiction one should be interested in other people (or so I've heard), however this writer can't get beyond his own self-absorbtion to write a shopping list, let alone a novel. This is a shame: because there is a real story here in Eggars's novel, in watching one's parents disintegrate from age and illness and all the emotions that entails. The handling of the story lacks a lot. Either the critics are fawning over the "next great hope" of new younger American fiction writers, or fiction is really dead as a doorpost and that is why we get pseudo-novels such as this. Sorry Dave, it just didn't work for me. Better luck with the next publisher's advance.
Rating:
Summary: Comedy for the twisted and warped
Review: I loved this book. I haven't laughed so frickin' hard reading a book for years. If your a dark humor kind of person and try to find comedy in pain - this is your book. Cable Guy, War of Roses, Fargo, Waiting fo Guffman, Pulp Fiction kind of humor. Not sure if I would catagorize Eggers as a manic depressive or obsessive compulsive? This is a uniquely written book, which is a large part of the reason it has such appeal. I think it has something that hits home for most anyone. I think those that don't like it are the same people that view The Simpson's or South Park as silly cartoons. For those that 'get it', get this.
Rating:
Summary: Don't judge a book by its Title
Review: I guess I had high expectations. I thought that I was getting a book that would be fun and introspective. A book that is self - aware. What Fun!. I was wrong. I laughed once while reading this novel and I don't think that it was even that funny (I was desperate for a laugh). If I had expected a novel that was depressing and wandered all over the place then this would be the book for me. Forgetting my disapointment about getting a book that wasn't amusing. I wasn't heartbeaking and it certaintly wasn't the work of a genious
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