Rating: 
Summary: Finally something refreshing
Review: A Box of Matches gives the entire New England states something to relate to, as well as the world. Pages turn with ease, while I was engaged by the protagonists laid back but critical train of thoughts. Baker made this Californian native feel compatible.
Emmett, who days begin with self absorbed quality time engages the reader very directly through his world. Emmett taking the time to stop and pay attention. With an invitational personality Emmett conjures up fascinating but life-like deatiling that illuminate pictures in your head. Emmett, a Smart and Honest individual who decides to "practice" his life on his own terms. Good read-"refreshing"
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Summary: A Box Of Matches...A Journey into Life's Smallest Details
Review: A Box Of Matches is a very unique novel from Nicholson Baker. Although this is a story in which absolutey nothing of significance occurs in the physical realm, the novel more than makes up for its lack of action. I have never read something quite like this before in my career as a student/reading enthusiast. Baker takes hold of the reader through a regimented story telling process in which everyday begins in the same way. Baker, (through main character Emmett) speaks about the simple things in life and how these things desirve more attention than they get. This novel allows access into the mind of Emmett, a man who is your typical New England man, with a not so typical thought process. This book is a very interesting read. It is clear with this novel that Baker is a very talented and imaginative writter who is not afraid to tackle new writing styles. I highly reccommend this book for anyone who likes to think deeply about life. There is a good chance that this book will change the way you live it.
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Summary: Nicholson Baker is a pathetic human being
Review: A Box of Matches is one of the most unique books I've ever read due to the fact that it consists of a man regaling us with his random thoughts, theories and advice. It just goes to show they're really is more going on inside a person's head then we actually think and what's more, some of Emmett's advice can actually be considered and used. I'd recommend this book to anyone who finds the hidden thoughts and un-said ideas just as interesting and comical as the ones that are said.
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Summary: Bedtime stories for grown-ups
Review: At first I didn't have much hope for this novel, as other stories about nothing (to which I was exposed through school) were nearly the death of my love of reading, but this was a book apart. I flipped through it several times on different visits to the book shop, each time thinking to myself that there was no point to reading it, yet inexplicably I kept picking it up. When I got it home I just couldn't put it down. It is original and well observed, and it is also deeply moving and strangely poetic. I found the subject matter and writing style very soothing-- like reading "Goodnight Moon" as a child. The pureness of emotion was amazing; who'd have thought that reading about somebody drawing the curtains could make you cry? If you open your mind to it, this book will rekindle your appreciation for life's little things.
Rating:
Summary: Great and Fast Read
Review: I really enjoyed reading A Box of Matches by Nicholas Baker. It was a well written piece. I really enjoyed the way in which he described every detail in the book. I Loved it becasue he engaged me in a way in which it made it sound as if he was talking to me and nobody else. Specially when he started his mornings by saying, Good Morning is 3:48am...and so on. After a while as the times changed it was...Wow, you woke up late today Emmet. Not only that, but he had a whole lot of advice to give to the readers. My favorite part which made me laugh was when he said...If you would like to wake up at five in the morning then you slam your head five times against the pillow then he said..So what do you do when you want to wake up at 5:30? That was hillarious. I really recommend this book to anybody and everybody. I hate reading, I deeply do except when is homework, but this book really caught my attention...I read it in one day. I wish there was another book, the continuation. Once again I recommend the book to all.
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Summary: Sizzling, It's Not!
Review: If you are looking for a sizzling summertime read, with action sparks flying, blazing dialogue, smoldering sex, and an incendiary plot-line, A Box of Matches is not your book. Nicholson Baker sets his story in the dead of winter and one would have to say that any thought of a plot-line is pretty nearly extinguished. Nothing much happens as the protagonist, forty-four-year-old Emmett, begins each day in darkness, drinking his coffee before the fire which he has built, thinking his thoughts.
Yet, from beginning to end, Emmett talks to us in his morning quiet and somehow warms us, giving us a feeling of kinship, understanding, and rest. He invests the quotidian round of all his (and our) activity with meaning and beauty. He reminds us of the need to step back from life and just be. Somehow we are healed by this somewhat quirky but very good man. I recommend this book.
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Summary: Plotless yet Brilliant!
Review: If you think a plotless novel can't be a success then you should read Nicholson Baker's A Box of Matches. With his highly charged, almost poetic language, Baker captures everyday experiences and injects them with new found significance. Through Emmett's character, Baker casts a humorous light on the simple things that cross our minds on a daily basis, yet we never talk about. His desriptive language paints a vivid picture which pulls the reader right into Emmett's living room, where you can almost feel the heat from the fire on your face. This is a story like no other I have ever read. It was refreshing and new. If you're looking for a simple read with great wisdom behind it, read A Box of Matches.
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Summary: Relaxing Summer Read
Review: Nicholson Baker's
A Box of Matches is based on a very simple premise. Emmett, a text-book editor nearing middle age, decided that every morning, he will wake up very early just to think. He ponders his life, and life in general, while burning a fire in his fireplace. When the box of matches used to light the fire is finished, so is his habit of waking up early just to think.Sound simple? It is. Sound too simple? It isn't. This deceptively simple plot actually makes for an exciting, yet relaxing read. The novel flows smoothly and quickly. While the reader reads about Emmett's thought, she or he also learns intimate details about his personal life. We see his close relationship with his wife Claire. We see his daily interactions with their teenage daughter, young son, and pet duck. Baker also adds funny comments to Emmett's thoughts, which allow us to get to know his quirky and witty personality. The novel is short, which adds to its eligibility as a summer reading choice. Admittedly, no one would want to read a 400 page book about one man's thoughts. As a short novel, however, the book is a well-written literary portrait of one man's life and character. The book also tends to inspire readers to get up earlier, to read and write more often, to enjoy life, and most importantly- to simply stop and think. If you are looking for an enjoyable and relaxing book to read this summer,
A Box of Matches is one book you are sure to like. It is a perfect book to read while at the beach, in the bathtub, on an airplane, or simply during your own early morning "think time."
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Summary: The ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Review: Nicholson Baker, author of "Double Fold"-winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award-has written a compelling, quirky novel on everyday life in "A Box of Matches."
The plot is simple: Emmett, a medical textbook editor, who lives with his wife, two children, a cat and a duck in the country, plans to awake before dawn to make a cup of coffee, start a fire in the dark and "be conscious when nobody else is conscious." The time alone in his armchair besides the hearth affords the protagonist time to think. Baker opens the novel with, "Last night my sleep was threatened by a toe-hole in my sock." The chapter goes on in clear, exacting details about his inane conflict and we see Emmett as ourselves struggling with a toe-hole in the sock and have to let out a little laugh.
Brief chapters, many only four to five pages long, comprise the novel that often reads like a long humorous soliloquy. Baker's writing is so adept at showing Emmett's world that one will believe a photo album was placed in the reader's hands. We journey through Emmett's entertaining eccentric thoughts on unplugging a bathtub, the mournful sound a train whistle makes, the grandfather who "believed that what the world needed, above all, was more autopsies" and so on. However, an underlying pain underscoring the novel is most evident as Emmett casually describes several suicide fantasies. He suddenly starts one chapter, "I am the only passenger on a roller coaster that is fitted out with a horizontal blade at the top of one of its turns." Despite a subdued melancholy presence, this novel, without being preachy, affirms life to be both meaningful and joyous by illuminating the ordinary to be something extraordinary.
Rating: 
Summary: Nicholson, NO!
Review: Oh Nicholson Baker, just when I'm about to crown you my favorite and grudgingly pass all of your books along to my best friends, I read "A Box of Matches," a novel which is less novel than a writing exercise legitimized as literature by a printer. I was shocked by "VOX" and fawned over "The Fermata," I even loved "Double Fold," his non-fiction turn on the assault on paper. But this book will make most of you feel like you are wasting your time.
A man wakes up every morning around five, lights a match, and thinks. That's it. His thoughts range from piquant to gross to nostalgic to melancholy. I'm not the kind of reader to expect world-changing events to take place in my literature. But I do like to care about my characters -- and this guy didn't cut it. Pick up one of Baker's other, more worthwhile books.
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