Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.

What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor.

TO INQUIRE ABOUT SCHEDULING JEANNETTE WALLS FOR SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS PLEASE CONTACT:

Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care. Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's intimate companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days. Their tenacity, loyalty, and love inspire him when all else fails.

Dog Years is a remarkable work: a moving and intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss. Mark Doty writes about the heart-wrenching vulnerability of dogs, the positive energy and joy they bring, and the gift they bear us of unconditional love. A book unlike any other, Mark Doty's surprising meditation is radiantly unsentimental yet profoundly affecting. Beautifully written, Dog Years is a classic in the making.

Before A.M. Homes was born, she was put up for adoption. Her birth mother was a twenty-two- year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with children of his own. The Mistress's Daughter is the story of what happened when, thirty years later, her birth parents came looking for her.

Homes, renowned for the psychological accuracy and emotional intensity of her storytelling, tells how her birth parents initially made contact with her and what happened afterward (her mother stalked her and appeared unannounced at a reading) and what she was able to reconstruct about the story of their lives and their families. Her birth mother, a complex and lonely woman, never married or had another child, and died of kidney failure in 1998; her birth father, who initially made overtures about inviting her into his family, never did.

Then the story jumps forward several years to when Homes opens the boxes of her mother's memorabilia. She had hoped to find her mother in those boxes, to know her secrets, but no relief came. She became increasingly obsessed with finding out as much as she could about all four parents and their families, hiring researchers and spending hours poring through newspaper morgues, municipal archives and genealogical Web sites. This brave, daring, and funny book is a story about what it means to be adopted, but it is also about identity and how all of us define our sense of self and family.

From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s

Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.

Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.

Secondly, the book is a long overdue portrait of the real Mario Batali and of the real Marco Pierre White--two complicated and brilliant chefs whose coverage in the press--while appropriately fawning--has never described them in their fully debauched, delightful glory. Buford has--for the first time--managed to explain White's peculiar--almost freakish brilliance--while humanizing a man known for terrorizing cooks, customers (and Batali). As for Mario--he is finally revealed for the Falstaffian, larger than life, mercurial, frighteningly intelligent chef/enterpreneur he really is. No small accomplishment. Other cooks, chefs, butchers, artisans and restaurant lifers are described with similar insight.

Thirdly, Heat reveals a dead-on understanding--rare among non-chef writers--of the pleasures of "making" food; the real human cost, the real requirements and the real adrenelin-rush-inducing pleasures of cranking out hundreds of high quality meals. One is left with a truly unique appreciation of not only what is truly good about food--but as importantly, who cooks--and why. I can't think of another book which takes such an unsparing, uncompromising and ultimately thrilling look at the quest for culinary excellence. Heat brims with fascinating observations on cooking, incredible characters, useful discourse and argument-ending arcania. I read my copy and immediately started reading it again. It's going right in between Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Zola's The Belly of Paris on my bookshelf. --Anthony Bourdain

Book Description

Bill Buford—author of the highly acclaimed best-selling Among the Thugs—had long thought of himself as a reasonably comfortable cook when in 2002 he finally decided to answer a question that had nagged him every time he prepared a meal: What kind of cook could he be if he worked in a professional kitchen? When the opportunity arose to train in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s three-star New York restaurant, Babbo, Buford grabbed it. Heat is the chronicle—sharp, funny, wonderfully exuberant—of his time spent as Batali’s “slave” and of his far-flung apprenticeships with culinary masters in Italy.

In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes the frenetic experience of working in Babbo’s kitchen: the trials and errors (and more errors), humiliations and hopes, disappointments and triumphs as he worked his way up the ladder from slave to cook. He talks about his relationships with his kitchen colleagues and with the larger-than-life, hard-living Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters.

Buford takes us to the restaurant in a remote Appennine village where Batali first apprenticed in Italy and where Buford learns the intricacies of handmade pasta . . . the hill town in Chianti where he is tutored in the art of butchery by Italy’s most famous butcher, a man who insists that his meat is an expression of the Italian soul . . . to London, where he is instructed in the preparation of game by Marco Pierre White, one of England’s most celebrated (or perhaps notorious) chefs. And throughout, we follow the thread of Buford’s fascinating reflections on food as a bearer of culture, on the history and development of a few special dishes (Is the shape of tortellini really based on a woman’s navel? And just what is a short rib?), and on the what and why of the foods we eat today.

Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a richly evocative memoir of Buford’s kitchen adventure, the story of Batali’s amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters.

It is a book to delight in—and to savor.

Customer Reviews:

Fun, fun fun in the bowels of the kitchen.......2007-10-12

I read Bourdain's book and loved it. I also liked this one. Raw, honest talk from someone who has been there.
The autobiography part was fascinating (can such characters really populate elite restaurants!?) and the lowdown on furiously making food night after night was priceless. The last section was too blah blah about Mario Batali, although the scenes of Italy were intriguing. A must read for real food lovers.

A humorous read that made me hungry!.......2007-10-07

Who wouldn't want to go on Buford's journey? He's a great tour guide on his gasto-tour of the kitchens of the Mario Batali and Pierre Marco White. He shows that kitchens can be places that are filled with potential dangers and loads of passion. It took me awhile to get through this book, in part because I kept getting hungry and had to go make something to eat! I'm ready to go clamp the pasta machine to the counter and whip up some fresh pasta.

It's a pretty dense book to get through, and the author wanders away from the main story often. Most of the time, it's to an interesting place, but sometimes, it's just a tangent. But aside from a few of those as a distraction, I thought this was a great book.

Interesting but not what I thought it was going to be.......2007-09-19

I got this book because my husband heard an interview on the radio and thought I would like it since I love to cook. It was interesting but spent too much time, for me, on the politics of working in a restaurant kitchen and not enough on the workings of food in a restaurant. I bored with the personalities and gave up trying to figure out who was who.

I think I made the pages soggy..........2007-09-17

This guy, Bill Buford, is pretty amazing. Despite the danger of slicing off his hands entirely (an accident that he somehow manages to repeat) under various huge, sharp, professional knives, he insisted going (back again and again) to Italy to learn about things so obscure even professional chefs wouldn't have much idea about.
If you're looking for a book about Batali, this isn't the most comprehensive one, but it's scathingly honest and if you really live and breathe food, you'll gain a whole lot more than goss about the inner workings of Batali's businesses. It gets a bit soppy at times - a bit too "Tuscany is beautiful, and Provence is the ultimate foodie heaven", but only fleetingly, and all can be forgiven once you read about the author's hilarious effort to cook a whole pig...

ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......2007-09-11

The chapters on Mario Batali and the dynamics of his kitchen were really interesting and engaging. I was intrigud by the sections on Marco Pierre White as I had just read Gordon Ramsey's autobiography in which his tempestuous relationship with White plays a significant role. The rest of Buford's book is just too tediously, self-indulgently written to the point where it killed my interest in the underlying subjects of pasta making and butchery (I ended up skimming page after page as I just couldn't take it). It reminded me of a computer spitting forth every bit of information in its memory regardless of relevance or interest. Just too many tedious, boorish details.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Average customer rating:

A fun and informative read
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
We are what we eat!
Completely Satisfied
Enjoyable, with Reservations

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Barbara Kingsolver , Camille Kingsolver , and Steven L. Hopp
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060852550
Release Date: 2007-05-01

Book Description

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.

"Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

Customer Reviews:

A fun and informative read.......2007-10-20

As I got closer and closer to the end of the book I started to feel upset that the story was coming to a close before I was ready. I didn't want to let go of this family or it's recipes. It breaks my heart that I wasn't able to get my hands on Steven's bread recipes!
What this big DID do was open my eyes to my food choices which can be hard but very neccessary.
If you are considering this book, don't hesitate. Some of the industrial information, like the treatment of chickens and the depletion of heirloom vegetables for the sake of shipping ease, was a little of a hard read compared with the sweet anecdotes of this charming family, but that shouldn't deter anyone from finishing this book and changing the way that they eat.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.......2007-10-18

This book was absolutely horrifying. I kept flipping back and forth, and couldn't believe what I was reading. While bringing about thoughts for a great cause--buying local; making your own; sustainability; etc., Kingsolver, with sadistic humor, walks us through the process of killing innocent animals for food. It's is absolutely shocking and sickening. In this century, the practice of killing animals for food is barbaric, and she proves where she stands on this issue. There are plenty of plant foods to sustain us all, without being cruel. Two thumbs down for Barbara Kinsolver. I used to be a fan. After reading this, I don't want to be associated in any way with this author.

We are what we eat!.......2007-10-16

This is the 12th Barbara Kingsolver book that I've read (in other words - all of them)....and once again, I was not disappointed. Ms. Kingsolver brings the reader around to her point of view with solid facts, wit, and ideas and images constructed in clear, lovely language. She leaves me yearning for more of her fine writing as well as her commitment to being part of the solution.
Keep Animal, Vegetable, Miracle close at hand for future references - and recipes.

Completely Satisfied.......2007-10-12

My book arrived promptly and was in perfect condition. I would buy from this seller again.

Enjoyable, with Reservations.......2007-10-10

I was attracted to this book as a kindred spirit (of sorts) to the author. I have been growing much of my own food (plant-based, anyway) as I could for many years. I prefer to eat seasonal foods, and buy locally produced items whenever available.

So I was a little disappointed when I first began reading, as much of the first chapter or two is taken up by the author's berating us all for our ignorance and our eating habits, as well as a lot of good, but unfortunately not new to me, information on our food supply.

Thankfully though, I hung in there, and found it to be an enjoyable read overall. I was looking forward to hear someone else's experiences in the garden and the kitchen, and that I did get.
I found myself skipping some parts, the description of the poultry slaughtering for example.
The book also includes sidebars written by her husband, which were mainly summaries of reports one may have already read elsewhere; and essays written by her daughter, Camille. I didn't find these entries of interest, and so skipped them as well.

If you enjoy reading about food and or gardening, or you have been having second thoughts about your grocery habits lately, then I recommend this book.

Average customer rating:

All I can say is "Oh My Gosh!"
disturbingly good story
Witty yet sad
....and when does it get funny?
Overrated

Running with Scissors: A Memoir
Augusten Burroughs
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 031242227X

Amazon.com

There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. --John Moe

Book Description

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor's bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull an electroshock- therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing and bestselling account of an ordinary boy's survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.

Customer Reviews:

All I can say is "Oh My Gosh!".......2007-10-18

I first watched the movie, but didn't "get it" because I have a habit of not paying close attention to movies, and I got lost in a soundtrack of tunes I grew up with. Then after discussing how I hadn't enjoyed the movie with a couple readers of the book, I ordered myself a copy and gave it a read.

WOW WOW WOW-- What Augusten Burroughs was able to overcome in his early life left me slack jawed! I wanted to laugh many times over, but at the same time it was too horrible to laugh-- It made me realize that my life wasn't so hard after all.

The fact that Augusten missed the benefit(or was it burden) of formal education beyond grammar school makes the reading all the better. What a gifted man to put such a personal experience to ink for all the world to see. I was immediately taken by his writing and set out to read all his work. I've read 3 of his 5 books and anxiously await the arrival of Magical Thinking as I write this.

I recommend anyone of his works and after devouring Running with Scissors watched the movie again and realized how true to his work the director was with the movie. I have a new appreciation admittedly. Now how I wish the postman would just deliver my newest Burroughs work tomorrow as I can't wait much longer :)Running With Scissors

disturbingly good story.......2007-10-18

Just a quick review that this was a very good book. You'll hate it or love it. This is in my top 10 books to read. HOWEVER - can be highly offensive if you're hypersensitive - You've been warned.

Witty yet sad.......2007-10-17

wow- very original. His voice as a 14 year old is incredible. I have really loved this book, in the "watching a car wreck" kind of a way. I can see the story, and I think that is rare. I am cheering for even the most despicable of characters, and loving even the most pathetic. It is incredibly graphic with abusive sex scenes, so buyer-be-ware... but it has an incredible reality to it. I am drawn in by his raw and real loneliness and desire. You almost can't believe it, but you can. I couldn't put it down. Great quick read:300pgs done in two evenings.

I would say that this book really gave me a much greater insight to the plight and life of a young gay man. I am really thankful to have this perspective.

....and when does it get funny?.......2007-10-13

I hitched a ride on the "Running with Scissors" bandwagon; the movie preview looked humorous so, naturally, I decided to read the book instead. If you are looking for another collection of humorous and cynical essays on childhood you may find in a David Sedaris book, this is certainly not it! Mr. Burroughs' approach to writing is much less observational than Sedaris; Mr. Sedaris comes off as a more sympathetic creature where Mr. Burroughs gains little of my sympathy despite suffering a childhood far more destructive and horrifying. I cannot say that I chuckled more than two or three times throughout the whole book, most likely those chuckles were directed at obscure references not even meant to be humorous. Being shocking is not necessarily funny, and this book is certainly not funny. Perhaps what Dane Cook is to comedy Augusten Burroughs is to humorous memoirs.

Overrated.......2007-10-12

Another book hopping on the "my life is screwed up because of my childhood/adolescence" ficto-auto-biography wagon.

The book reads almost formulaically, in the vein of Sedaris. I didn't find the writing interesting or engaging or particularly humorous.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Average customer rating:

Amazing!
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius
I tried to get my money back
Wonderful, one of the best books I've read all year
Please read this book!

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375725784
Release Date: 2001-02-13

Amazon.com

Dave Eggers is a terrifically talented writer; don't hold his cleverness against him. What to make of a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story? For starters, there's a good bit of staggering genius before you even get to the true story, including a preface, a list of "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book," and a 20-page acknowledgements section complete with special mail-in offer, flow chart of the book's themes, and a lovely pen-and-ink drawing of a stapler (helpfully labeled "Here is a drawing of a stapler:").

But on to the true story. At the age of 22, Eggers became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers. In the ensuing sibling division of labor, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Christopher. The two live together in semi-squalor, decaying food and sports equipment scattered about, while Eggers worries obsessively about child-welfare authorities, molesting babysitters, and his own health. His child-rearing strategy swings between making his brother's upbringing manically fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. (Case in point: his idea of suitable bedtime reading is John Hersey's Hiroshima.)

The book is also, perhaps less successfully, about being young and hip and out to conquer the world (in an ironic, media-savvy, Gen-X way, naturally). In the early '90s, Eggers was one of the founders of the very funny Might Magazine, and he spends a fair amount of time here on Might, the hipster culture of San Francisco's South Park, and his own efforts to get on to MTV's Real World. This sort of thing doesn't age very well--but then, Eggers knows that. There's no criticism you can come up with that he hasn't put into A.H.W.O.S.G. already. "The book thereafter is kind of uneven," he tells us regarding the contents after page 109, and while that's true, it's still uneven in a way that is funny and heartfelt and interesting.

All this self-consciousness could have become unbearably arch. It's a testament to Eggers's skill as a writer--and to the heartbreaking particulars of his story--that it doesn't. Currently the editor of the footnote-and-marginalia-intensive journal McSweeney's (the last issue featured an entire story by David Foster Wallace printed tinily on its spine), Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history--so much so that he can't feel an emotion without the sense that it's already been felt for him. What may seem like postmodern noodling is really just Eggers writing about pain in the only honest way available to him. Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity, and--especially in its concluding pages--this memoir as metafiction is affecting beyond all rational explanation. --Mary Park

Book Description

The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. The Vintage edition includes a new appendix by the author.

Customer Reviews:

Amazing!.......2007-10-10

Dave Eggers has said he wouldn't recommend starting a writing career with a memoir as open and honest as this one but I beg to differ. His open honesty about his life is what made me an everlasting fan. To use your own life to show others they are not alone in this insane world is the greatest gift a writer can give.
If you haven't read this book yet, you are missing something great in your life.

a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.......2007-09-30

My high school book club wanted to read this book. It's a Catholic school and 2 students loved the book. I foraged through the whole thing looking for topics that would work with my students. Maybe I'm a prude but with so many expletives and other objectionable topics in this junker, I thought I could be hauled off to the "big house" if we read this book.

Yes, Dave Eggers has done a truthful account of his life and I did feel for him at times, but the ending really made me feel ripped off and used.

I tried to get my money back.......2007-09-18

I suggested this book to my book club without having read it first. Big mistake! All of us hated this book so much, that we wrote a letter to the publisher asking for our money back. Perhaps we don't understand Gen-Xers, but it seemed to all of us to be a book about NOTHING. At least Seinfeld made us laugh!

We now have a rule that no book is to be recommended to the club without having first read it yourself!

Wonderful, one of the best books I've read all year.......2007-08-24

Absolutely wonderful. This is without a doubt one of the best books I've read all year. Eggers' self-referential humor and heartbreaking asides weave a tapestry worthy of praise. I highly recommend this book to almost any audience. Audacious and thought provoking. An affirmation of living life and a meditation on mortality. It is probably the best example of what it is like to be a single twenty-something living in the U.S. in the modern era. Definitely worth the time.

Please read this book!.......2007-08-21

What an incredible account of the author's pain, hope, love, fears, hatred. It's the menoir of author, Dave Eggers, showing his life as guardian of his young brother after the death of their parents.

I don't think I have ever read anything so honest and stark in its emotional content. Particularily being a first-hand personal account of the events, the story shows the jumbles mess of emotions coming with such responsibility and stress.

Please do yourself a favor and read the book!

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