Sunday, January 29, 2006

Book 4 of 52: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close 

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone’s heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone’s hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don’t really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn’t have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war

In order to keep from stressing over my new commitment to literary bar-raising, I'm letting the 52 Books in 52 Weeks come naturally. Other than a penchant to avoid field-specific nonfiction the blase approach seems to be working. Four weeks in, and I just finished book four without even realizing it was on the list.

I did promise myself to blog more about the books themselves, rather than letting them fade into the mass consciousness. But Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel is so gorgeous it leaves me speechless.

If you haven't read this tight multigenerational, temporally untrustworthy tale of language, loss, family and fears, read the first chapter online, and then call your library right this minute to reserve the rest of it. You won't be sorry, and you might even cry.

posted by boyhowdy | 1:59 AM |

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Comments:

Keep up the good work
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# posted by  Anonymous : 9:56 PM, November 29, 2006

 

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