Customer Reviews

Book: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the best books I've ever read. Brilliant. Funny. Ironic. Both serious and funny, genre and parody, surreal and genuine. I just finished reading it for the second time.

(Gotta love those rebellious footnotes!)

If you have sullied your shoes in the quagmire of academic politics, you will find this book amusing. (If you haven't, it's still pretty darned funny, although it does require an appreciation for in-jokes of the academic kind.)

It will be a sad day when this novel goes out of print. (Read Book and you'll understand.) The satire is specific to English departments, but anyone who hates pretension or who has dealt with the inside politics of higher education will really savor it. The writing is clever and inventive, a pleasure to read from the very first page.

I read this book when it came out, 7 or 8 years ago, and enjoyed it hugely. I'm online now to order a paperback copy--I've always intended to own it but never got around to it. One measure of how good this is is that a great friend of mine hates it. He's bright enough, but often a bit thick-headed if he feels out of his depth contextually (as a teenager in the early eighties, he didn't laugh at Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because he felt its humor presupposed a familiarity with science fiction which he lacked). So rather than enjoy Book as the glorious lampoon that it is, he preferred to see it as a frivolous 5-finger exercise with too many in jokes.

The mark of a good funny book: over-literal types shouldn't like it! But it's the best medicine for the rest of us!!

After 20 years in academia, BOOK exloded the political nuances of my experience into raucous humor. I laughed til I couldn't laugh any more and I have given away multiple copies, including one to a University president.

I read the reviews for the book and decided that it looked interesting and decided to read it. After reading the book in a day, the least that can be said is that it is an amusing book. Even if you are not yet an official member of academia and are just a lowly student, it is very easy to see how some of what is going on in the book also happens in real life. I daresay it also happens in other professions, but I don't have the experience to back that statement up.

Though the book is very fun to read, some of the themes could have been better developed. For example, the idea that by destroying all of Adam Snell's work would eliminate him from history could have been taken a lot further. PFITZ by Andrew Crumey plays with many similar ideas concerning the creation of a character and the possibility of being forgotten with the elimination of one's work, and PFITZ is better in that respect. Also, the reasoning behind the attacks by Underwood is fairly lame.

Even though the book is not perfect it still has many good qualities and if you're looking for a book to enjoy during the beautiful spring weather, you won't be disappointed with this one.

One of the great books of academic humor. I don't know why it didn't get broader popularity. It deserves a renaissance. Brilliant.

The produt arrived within the time limmits given and was in very good condition as stated by the seller. If I plan on purchasing more books online, I would definatly go through this seller again. I have been very pleased with the product and service.

Who says that you need to have a computer to have an interactive book? This novel, at once a thriller--with psychopathic killers and deranged college professors and literate cops--is also a romance--with an author fantasizing over his wild untameble literary creations and angelic publishers. Grudin writes with the verve and sophistication of a jazz improvisationalist and still manages to manipulate the plot to keep me turning page after page. And I haven't even mentioned his satirical approach to deconstructionist literary theorists yet.

For satire, a good fantasy, and a literate poke at the literati, pick up this Book.

Hillarious. Satirical brilliance