Ex Libris Kirkland

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First Written 2017
Genre Fiction
Origin US
Publisher Penguin
ISBN-10 1594205612
ISBN-13 978-1594205613
My Copy library copy
First Read October 29, 2017

The Idiot



A coming-of-age novel with a college freshman at the center - not my usual jam. And this isn't my jam at all really, but I loved Batuman's The Posessed, and I love her writing itself, even if the plot and content isn't what I'm shopping for.

Batuman is really funny, and she does an incredibly good job at capturing the feeling of observing the world around you as an inexplicable comedy. But this tone isn't enough to carry the whole book for me. It probably could have been 100 pages shorter and I would have liked it better. But still full of stuff I thought was great.

Noted on November 13, 2017

ALSO, if Batuman writes a third book and it's not also titled from a Dostoevsky book, Imma gonna be upset.

Noted on November 13, 2017

Svetlana was way better than I was at memorizing. She accepted it in her heart as something necessary. Growing up in America, I had been taught to despise memorization, which was known as "rote memorization," or sometimes as "regurgitating facts." The teachers said that what they wanted was to teach us to think. They didn't want us to turn out like robots, like the Soviet and Japanese children. That was the only reason Soviet and Japanese children did better than us on tests. It was because they didn't know how to think.

Quoted on November 13, 2017

We went ot the shoe department. That was the beginning of the end, not just because shoe shopping is always sad - what was 'Cinderella' if not an allegory for the fundamental unhappiness of shoe shopping?

Quoted on November 13, 2017

In fact I had no such interest, but I knew it was wrong to do things just because other people did. Other people couldn't be the reason why you did anything.

Quoted on November 13, 2017

I realized for the first time that all the kids in the class, even the bullies, rooted for Dumbo, against Dumbo's tormentors. Invariably they laughed and cheered, both when Dumbo succeeded and when bad things happened to his enemies. But they're you, I thought to myself. How did they not know? They didn't know. It was astounding, an astounding truth. Everyone thought they were Dumbo.

Quoted on November 13, 2017


Ex Libris Kirkland is a super-self-absorbed reading journal made by Matt Kirkland. Copyright © 2001 - .
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