Rating: 
Summary: The Perfect Book.
Review: I think that this is the Perfect book. If you have read AHBWOSG you will know what I mean. This book has everything in it. It is creative as well. With pictures and explanations placed here and there. I couldn't put it down. Dave Eggers is the next great American writer. Buy this book and join the future.
Rating:
Summary: Fast-flowing, interesting novel...
Review: YSKOV examines problems of presumed superiority, guilt, shame, grief and healing. It's well written, pacy, very funny, often very sad, and most importantly fresh. Very highly recommended....
Rating: 
Summary: staggeringly mediorcre
Review: I was excited to find out that Dave Eggers was publishing another book. His first book was the excellent memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and it pushed the boundaries of what memoir can be. It was creative, original, and an excellent read. I was very interested in reading his new book, fiction this time. ...I really like how it is set up. The novel begins on the front cover (there is no dust jacket) and continues on the inside front cover and moves on from there. Eggers occasionally uses pictures and other little tricks to show the reader that this is not being told or written in a conventional way. There are no chapters, but the story is broken up into days (Monday, Tuesday, etc). Other reviews point out that the ending was implausible and just tacked on. I disagree. I found the entire novel implausible, so I was able to ignore that part of the story. The narrative follows Will and Hand as they travel across the planet in a quest to give away $34,000 that Will mysteriously acquired. The story and novel is an interesting concept, but it isn't well told at all. There is no reason to care for Will or Hand and to be honest, I started hoping they'd get mugged or killed....but I knew I still had more pages to go so they stay alive in order to give reason for those last 100 pages. The novel just wasn't that well written or well thought out. I know that Eggers did a fair amount of research into the locations his characters was going to visit, and the locations in the novel feel authentic...but the story is ultimately empty. All of the promise of AHWOSG is lost in this novel.
Rating: 
Summary: a heartbreaking work of traveling genius
Review: I really enjoyed Eggers previous book A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius and definitely was not disappointed by his latest offering. This is a funny book, and Eggers has a great ear for dialogue. He hits the right comic notes, and the young protagonists' wanderings have something of the character of such "lost generation" perambulations as A Moveable Feast and Being Geniuses Together. Overall, there's a great mix of comedy and pathos, and for freshness of voice, Eggers's book is right up there with Kevin Canty's Nine Below Zero, Jonathan Safron Foer's Everything is Illuminated, Andrew Jackson's Discontents, Kevin Brockmeier's Things that Fall from the Sky and Neal Pollack's risible Anthology... A nice offering of entertaining new voices. Velocity is also a travelogue, and ranks with the fanciful travel stories of Conrad, London, and Poe's inimitable Narrative of A.G. Pym.
Rating:
Summary: Innovative and entertaining
Review: Freeflowing and fun, this is a story through several countries, of Will and Hand, who set out to give a sum of randomly-earned money to strangers, while attempting to rationalise the death of their friend Jack. Will seems to be the volition of the book, Hand the physicality. In a magical-realist twist, we're told on the first page by Will that he'll die, and through the novel, we notice his awareness that he is writing - he even provides us with incidental photographs and scans; however, his knowing is never qualified: we're shown maps that should actually be buried and realise he's taken no camera with him... I can only think these aspects have a designed ambiguity to them, but we're never reconciled to the fact that the narrator knows his own death. How does he, can he, know this? Only because the author has decided to let him know? Will chose not to give his money to charity but fly to second- and third-world countries giving it away. This decision is never justified, but is the backbone of the narrative. The narrator comments, money is the language he speaks; they stop to give US dollars to some women on the road, expecting their lives to benefit and change; this is an arrogant assumption of the narrator, and poses the question, more so with each donation: Why do these young men believe their dollars will affect with such profundity, when they never ask - What is the daily drive of the West doing to the welfare of billions, apart from the few peasants they happen to pass?
Thus, they live blinkered lives (a topical observation besides) - they haven't given thought to the inequality between them and those they witness on their trip; they seem so intent on ridding themselves of money, they end up throwing it out the window, not caring who gets it. You feel anger for this; in their overtired state they've benefited no one, and lost regard for the good that money can bring, being too concerned with the confusion it creates in their own lives. Why not analyse money on a broader level, rather than centric to the characters' lives and how they're affected by it? (This is touched on lightly when on a plane Will feels guilty about distribution of wealth.) There are some technical innovations here, such as the internal dialogues introduced by Joycean em-dashes: for me the most amusing and poetical writings; and the frequent dropout of thought, marked in this case by the Sternean em-dash. His design is as sensitive as William Gass's, and though some may find the tricks (blank pages, Ford Broncos) distracting or pointless, they succeed, in a postmodern sense, if only as ornateness for ornateness's sake. He owes, this time around, something to John Barth and WG Sebald.
There were many typographical errors, and at times, passages felt under-edited; but the writing is humorous (the money pouch episodes were hilarious) if not slightly unworldly and immature; but that is quite apt for the characters, and is - being their main weakness - part of their likeableness.
But when Will compares cities he visits to places in the US, later commenting everything in the world looks like something in America - which depresses him because nothing will ever look new to him - at this point I wish he'd just stayed at home.
Will's grief is dealt with in a realist manner; it's overlong, but is heartfelt. He does, in his own way, attempt to digress discursively on matters such as existence, God, determinism and purpose, but seems ultimately to want to give us a chuckle: I think this book could have tackled some meatier themes.
Figuratively, there are some original sketches, the riff with the sliding door the first of many. The binding and presentational aspects are amusing, but words are what stick, and in this case, the book's quirkiness gives it its charm and individuality, but I wanted it to be more serious for sake of longevity; this is not to say humour detracts literary credibility - not at all - but immaturity (writerly, not personal) certainly does.
A Time review praised this novel for inventing the verb Van-Horn. For me this exemplified a problem: the narrator relates to first-hand foreign, humanistic, and natural experiences, much like many young Westerners: through reference to pop-culture, TV and cinema. This is common - a sign of the times - but these similes and metaphors have a sell-by date, will soon read stale, obsolete, or felt without true consideration. I found this novel profound when read as a metaphor for modern Western life, as a youth, after the existentialists - whose realisations led them to nihilism and depression; but in a postmodern world, we're now born with these findings as fact. The world-trip metaphors life itself, while the constant set-backs and pointlessness of the narrator's mission can be read as things we encounter in everyday life: our modern struggle. The purposelessness of the mission is pervading, the only drive they feel is to get to the next destination; though once there, despondency and the urge to keep moving are renewed. There was nothing in the text that spurred this interpretation; one can find more evidence for reading its surface concerns; but was it designed by the author, an unconscious coincidence, or reader intertextualisation? All valid, it sealed the integrity nonetheless (also lending weight - interestingly - to symbolism: Jack's funeral, the beating). This is an avant-garde novel which succeeds - despite its flaws - in being both a progressive and entertaining work.
Rating:
Summary: Who ever said this guy was all that great??
Review: I have read both of Egger's books and I appreciate the freshness of his voice, but his 'cleverer-than-thou' rants are self-indulgent. It's interesting for awhile but can't be sustained for more than half of the book. A plot would be nice. His writing style reminds me of Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X. It's interesting, but will seem juvenille and self-absorbed with time.
Rating:
Summary: nice paper..crappy story
Review: This book is printed on lovely thick paper. That is about the highest compliment I can muster. I have only managed to read 160 pages, but I'm not sure I'll waste my time finishing. This book is nothing like AHWOSG. Do not buy this book if you are expecting a similar experience. Buy this book if you feel like owning a book printed in Iceland. Yahtzee!
Rating:
Summary: A very good novel
Review: I think that Eggers has a voice unlike any other and that this book is a remarkable follow-up to AHWOSG. It is beautifully written.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but disappointing
Review: I was thrilled to hear that Dave Eggers was finally publishing the follow-up to AHBWOSG. The end result (his first novel) is interesting, but not entirely successful. The novel features the travels of Will and his best friend, Hand. Will and Hand lost their other best friend, Jack, six months earlier, and their lives have been forever changed. Will also came into $80,000 pretty much be accident; unbeknownest to him, his picture was featured in an ad. Will clearly feels guilty that he has this money and that he's still alive while Jack is not. His "solution" is to plan an around-the-world trip with Hand to give away money to worthy people. It sounds interesting, but the plot quickly settles into a series of somewhat repetitive vignettes. They arrive in a new country and have great plans. Their plans are thwarted and they end up wasting time in the country. It's kind of a cross between TV's "Amazing Race" and a travelogue. What saves this book is the sometimes thrilling ideas with which Eggers imbues his writing (e.g., the Jumping people, the librarian in his head). Overall, a worthy read, and one that will likely leave you wondering what thrills Eggers will provide us with next time.
Rating:
Summary: Loved it!
Review: I was amazed by Heartbreaking Work so I expected a lot of this book. It delivered. I hate predictability in writing and this definitely kept me guessing and never gave me a clear vision of what was to come. I was laughing out loud at some of the more outrageous parts (loved what the note said that they tried to tape to donkeys along the way). If you want to read something refreshing and original, you will love this book.
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