This review was first posted on Music, Books and TeaI first heard of this book around a year or so ago. It was mentioned on another book blog, so I looked it up on Amazon and decided it sounded pretty interesting. Unfortunately, I totally misread the first description of this book. Had I read it properly the first time around, I doubt I'd have been that interested in it, and I doubt I'd have actually read it. That's not to say it was a bad book, it just wasn't the type of book I'd normally read.I found the way Egan wrote A Visit from the Goon Squad to be very clever. All the individual stories wove together into one, which I really enjoyed. I loved that you had the choice to either pick and choose what chapters you read, or to read the book in its entirety. All the chapters worked well as short-stories, and the majority of them were interesting to read. I struggled through a few of them, mainly due to their length. I seem to get very restless when I'm reading a book with an incredibly long chapter in which nothing happens. That happened to me a couple of times with A Visit from the Goon Squad, and really hampered my enjoyment of the book.A Visit from the Goon Squad has a colourful cast of characters. They all have their flaws, but this didn't necessarily make them more realistic or relatable.Sasha, for example, was a kleptomaniac, and, as we discover more of her throughout the book, not a particularly nice person. She did redeem herself slightly in the powerpoint-only chapter, as we got to see that she had finally changed her ways and grown up. I much preferred the chapters that related more to Bennie's life than those of Sasha's, I think that has something to do with the fact that I really could not warm to her character.This wasn't a book that changed my life or, if I'm being totally honest, made me think all that much. It was interesting, for the most part, but it's certainly not a book that I'd purposely search out to read.
Music, Books and Tea
This review was first posted on Music, Books and TeaI first heard of this book around a year or so ago. It was mentioned on another book blog, so I looked it up on Amazon and decided it sounded pretty interesting. Unfortunately, I totally misread the first description of this book. Had I read it properly the first time around, I doubt I'd have been that interested in it, and I doubt I'd have actually read it. That's not to say it was a bad book, it just wasn't the type of book I'd normally read.I found the way Egan wrote A Visit from the Goon Squad to be very clever. All the individual stories wove together into one, which I really enjoyed. I loved that you had the choice to either pick and choose what chapters you read, or to read the book in its entirety. All the chapters worked well as short-stories, and the majority of them were interesting to read. I struggled through a few of them, mainly due to their length. I seem to get very restless when I'm reading a book with an incredibly long chapter in which nothing happens. That happened to me a couple of times with A Visit from the Goon Squad, and really hampered my enjoyment of the book.A Visit from the Goon Squad has a colourful cast of characters. They all have their flaws, but this didn't necessarily make them more realistic or relatable.Sasha, for example, was a kleptomaniac, and, as we discover more of her throughout the book, not a particularly nice person. She did redeem herself slightly in the powerpoint-only chapter, as we got to see that she had finally changed her ways and grown up. I much preferred the chapters that related more to Bennie's life than those of Sasha's, I think that has something to do with the fact that I really could not warm to her character.This wasn't a book that changed my life or, if I'm being totally honest, made me think all that much. It was interesting, for the most part, but it's certainly not a book that I'd purposely search out to read.
