Rating: 
Summary: great reviews, great blurbs, mediocre book
Review: I don't like reading new books; I don't like seeing new films; I don't like listening to new music because hype can kill it all. The hype machine is/was/is still in overrev about this book and, ultimately, after reading it, it's a whole ladda nada. I loved the whole author's preface - it was new and fresh. And I also really enjoyed the author's treatment of raising his young brother. But over half the book was a snoozefest, both stylistically and narratively. To me, it reads like a promising rough draft. Oh well.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: Dave Eggers lacks the discipline required to produce finely-tuned sentences one after the other. Sure, he can crank out the occasional poetic paragraph, many of which read like Harold Brodkey pastiche (e.g., the first paragraph of Part One), but soon he is back to cluttered, overpunctuated, overextended sentences that verge on transcriptions of disjointed speech. A typical example is the sentence on p. 3 that begins 'So finally Beth procured, and our mother began to spit the green fluid into, a small plastic container,' and continues for some lines with far too many jarringly articulated clauses. The book, which Eggers says he rewrote twice, is slapdash in its execution and relies heavily on reflexive devices that wear thin before this reader had finished the acknowledgments. All of this is not to dispute the routine assertions that Eggers is talented and clever. He simply has not yet learned how to write.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated
Review: All style and no substance; Dave fills his prose with literary gimmicks, and, especially in the latter half, long, incoherent ramblings. Might have been a fine read if he'd told his story in a direct, honest way.
Rating: 
Summary: Dirty Dark Paneling and Perfect Frisbee
Review: A must-have for all the neurotic people who have been angry, sad, joyful, spiteful, beautiful, wonderful and bitter. Growing up with dirty paneling certainly causes some issues which cannot be answered here. Eggers does not attempt to, he merely attempts to purge himself and it is both exciting, disgusting, sad and disturbing and brilliant to read about. And maybe, just maybe the real moral is that sliding on wooden floors with socks and doing stupid frisbee tricks is what keeps him most sane and in touch with what is most important, youth and simple ignorance.
Rating:
Summary: Burden in my bag
Review: First off, Eggers is a talented writer. He's also a writer with emotional baggage...a lot of it. While his reflections are at times endearing, they tend to get mundane (and downright depressing) in the latter half of the novel. Early recounts of brother Toph and general maladjustment are an interesting read. Then Eggers goes on tangents relating to crazy "20-something" antics while relaying his hyper paranoia in a rather annoying, self-centered way. Seeing as this is a true-to-life memoir, it's not the kind of information you can brush off as "just made up." You're reading about HIS mother's death, HIS dirtier-than-hell apartment, HIS inner-most fantasies and HIS flippant sex life. After a while, I began to think that, when I carried this book with me to work, I was transporting a mini Eggers in my bag. Friendly little chap at first, then a brick. A burden that I wanted to get rid of so badly, but couldn't help but devour in its whole first.
Rating:
Summary: Wow-Someone too shallow for even The Real World
Review: Hard to believe but we read in Eggers "AHWOSG" that he was deemed not worthy of even The Real World-the benchmark of acceptance in his crass generation. The remainder of his book goes on to prove how smart the producers of the show really were. Nowhere do we get a true thought or feeling from this hackneyed author. Instead we get a series of tricks designed to cover his serious literary flaws. He can't properly recreate a scene so he stops trying halfway through to tell you that he has no idea what he's doing-long after the reader has already concluded as much for himself; he has no sense of subtlety so he comes right out and screams his point at the reader, hoping that you'll admire the volume. It's sad when this is the best we can do.Question: If you went to a restaurant and the chef came out and announced that everything after the appetizer was going to be disapointing, would that make the food taste any better? Apparently Eggers thinks so.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, Brilliance!
Review: There's hope for this country yet! This book is actually on the bestseller lists, even though it isn't an insult-to-the-intelligence Oprah special. Eggers writes brilliantly. Yes, at times he stumbles, but so did Shakespeare. If you like AHWOSG, try Brauner's Love Songs of the Tone-Deaf, which overlaps amazingly in subject and style, to the point where I'm wondering if one author is a pseudonym for the other. Two great books I can't recommend highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: Convoluted, overrated
Review: I bought this book after reading about it in several newspapers. Unfortunately, finding the motivation to finish it was a chore. Eggers has a unique (and unorthodox) style of writing, but it didn't add much to the book. He writes how we think which at times is garbled and veers off in many tangents. It's clever, but it tested my patience after some time. Sometimes there would be long descriptions and endless ranting that led nowhere. At 21, I've always viewed most people my age as being shallow, callous, and cynical. Dave destroyed my expectations of proving me wrong. I began to loathe the man very quickly. I think the fact that he wrote this book was very narcissistic of him. If there was any character that I admired, it would have to be Toph. He managed to survive living with a messy, unintelligent, and hedonistic individual. I like to think that there's hope for him.
Rating: 
Summary: Ordinary Person
Review: This book immensely readable and it did draw me in, but it ultimately left me with a sense of there being no "there" there. The construction of the piece and the various devices he employs to tell his story come across as too overt. Eggers seems smart enough to know all the up-to-the-minute post-modern flourishes, but lacks the, dare I say it--genius--to carry it off. Consider a work like Joyce's Ulysses where the most ordinary events are told in a wholly new extraordinary way. By comparison, Egger's efforts to tell his extraordinary tale in an extraordinary way diminishes the work. I felt like saying, "Dave, stop trying to be a genius and just tell it straight. For me, the impact and profound sadness of the tale would have been far greater. Dave, if you're out there reading these reviews. I just wanted to say thanks for describing Old Elm Road and the 7 Eleven. I grew up in the same neighborhood until I was 9 (1962-1971). You brought back a flood of memories about I place I haven't thought about in almost 30 years.
Rating:
Summary: When Style Rules Substance
Review: Dave Eggers is one emotionally guarded guy. Why all the mind-numbing literary acrobatics ? Is he just trying to protect whatever his emotional truth might be ? Does he just want to make sure we all know how truly unique he is -- not at all like the rest of us who might have had a more mundane response to the losses and upheaval he experienced ? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Mr. Eggers is unable to transcend the emotional shallowness that seems to plague his generation. But it does surprise me that his publisher would choose a writer less able (or maybe just less willing) to communicate honestly. There is no wisdom or revelation in this book -- just one silly manuever after another to obfuscate some very real and painful truths.
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