I was sold on the knockout first line of this novel - one of the best openers since Du Mauriers ‘Rebecca’. Described as ‘brilliantly exhausting’ by Mark Sarvas and adorned with a blurb by James Wood, of the New York Times - “Reads as if Philip Roth’s work were fired into David Foster Wallace’s inside the Hadron particle collider” – Book of Numbers went straight to the top of my TBR pile.However, faced with a massive hardback doorstopper of 600 pages, my enthusiasm has waned somewhat, so I am put...

1) None of the people giving this bad reviews here have read the whole book and/or they are incapable of reading serious literature at all (see: the reviewer who confuses the 'racist' ideas of characters with the ideas of the author [doing her own bit of quasi-racist thing with a veiled anti-Jewish comment about Brooklyn] OR the other reviewer who complains about being forced to expand her vocabulary).2) This is an ambitious novel, and it is very good. My bias is to like ambitious books more tha...

The supersonically skilled word-spinner, whose incredible novel Witz (although overlong and insufferable) showed the young man’s smarts with language to have almost no limits, has managed to combine his torrential lexicon with something approaching a “plot”, and secure well-deserved mainstream attention. For those Witz-lovers, or those who read his prolific previous (two novels, a story collections, and chapbooks precede this epic monstrosity), worried about a dilution of ambition or language fo...

1.5 starsI can't say that Book of Numbers was a disappointment (that 2.93 kept my expectations low) but the handful of folks that lauded this thing like it was some kind of 'Ulysses Meets the Internet Age' drew me to see what I was missing out on. I was not prepared, though, for this barely readable, technobabbly mess Joshua Cohen foisted upon us. I don't want to waste a bunch of time writing about a book I almost completely hated, but a few things:Without question, Cohen is an intelligent guy,...

After a strong start, each passing chapter becomes tetrationally more insufferable.

Ok, I hate to do this, but I'm calling it. I simply can't finish this book. I received a copy on Netgalley almost a month ago, and I dove right it. The writing is different from most contemporary fiction today, with wordy sentences, full of humor and depth. The plot was a great premise for this day and age, and if I weren't someone who has so much to read, if I were the type of person who only read two books a year, this one would be a wonderful choice. The sentences are some to savor and the id...

A kinda history/early days look at the Internet and more specifically search engine aspect in the guise of a Google-like "Tetration" facimilie and its founders/engineers/VCs/Mgt/etc. It's highwire and highblown techniques et technology and the times therin. Au courant as ever. Big Bro yo.

how can one novel be this fascinating and this exhausting

This is the bread of affliction. Eli Eli lama shavaktani? Father, Father, why didn’t Christ quote the Psalms in Hebrew—was he that inept, or does excruciation always call for the vernacular?This isn't for most people. Even the intrepid biosphere of goodreads will find this alarming, if not unnecessary. I do appreciate Cohen's project, even if it is maddening. There is a dash of Trollope, lanced with Sade, pushing a ready mirror to our media-drunk rictus. The result isn't pretty. Technology has

I think one or more of the Joshua Cohens really loves to write but holds his readers in very low regard. This never-ending exercise holds some gems within it, but they are so cleverly disguised and concealed within a monstrous text, that merely interested and patient readers will miss them. Only the most fanatic readers, or possibly best friends, relatives and fictional readers of the Joshua Cohens will love this book. The rest of us will feel sad and disappointed that so much talent is wasted.

Le romancier pense que sa merde ne pue pas. Cohen is no doubt very clever, "but sometimes his brains go to his head."*Do you find Parisians friendly to Americans? Do you deify Ivy Leaguers?If so, you might love this novel.Me, I find literary haughtiness tedious and vexatious, and the writing in this novel acted as the literary equivalent of a Benzo-Nyquil cocktail.*Borrowing and modifying a 1953 quote of Margot Asquith referring to Lord Birkenhead.

I was so excited to receive NetGalley copy because it received a Starred review from Publishers' Weekly. Unfortunately, I soon realized this novel is not for me. I was constantly reminded by the author that I am not worthy of his novel. I'm sorry that I'm not one of Manhattan intellectuals. I'm sorry I couldn't laugh when it's supposed to be funny. I am a poor country bumpkin who stumbled into a very fashionable Manhattan party wearing a hand-me-down flower pattern dress.But, I have a feeling it...

Fucking frustrating, offensive, but a masterpiece.

A masterpiece. Relentlessly clever. The demented techno wordplay will ripple into the future, endlessly perplexing jaundiced, crusty historians of so-called traditional literature as it astounds and speaks to every savvy and savage child of our screen-dependent age.A big book of inside jokes, which, in DFW-fashion, elicits a gut-reaction on every page via the reflexive verbal elbowing the reader receives from the author. The biggest workout for my Kindle's touch-definition function since I-reall...

Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers may well be the only hot ticket/hot number I read this year. Leon Forrest’s Divine Days and Schmidt’s Abend mit Goldrand just arrived and I doubt very much whether anything being published this year and flirting with The Millions and/or the NYT’s Breast=selling list will come anywheres near touching either of these two BURIED works of GENIUS. But I could be wrong.Cohen I got curious about because he had published a first novel, a FAT novel, with Dalkey Archive, and...

The first thing to realize is that this is not an average novel. If you're looking for a breezy read, this is not it. While I've seen comparisons to David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon, I'm not finding it anywhere near that difficult, but I can see why someone might make that comparison: it's just absolutely packed with quick-witted asides, and it would be easy to either get frustrated trying to follow it, or think you're following it when you're actually missing a great deal. So you need to...

Thoughts about this masterpiece that are not actually about this masterpiece:1. Goodreads / NetGalley / Publishers must stop sending galleys/pre-release copies of books to people in exchange for an "honest review." The "honest reviews" piling up here like dead leaves in a gutter that give the book "1 star." The reviewers openly acknowledging having read "like maybe 100 pages" which means "like maybe the first six paragraphs." The "reviewers" attacking the author for "trying to make them feel stu...

unreadable junk posing as postmodern literature

Azoy ir viln tsu vern a shreyber?(So You Want To Be A Writer?)It’s a bit like being a farmer (watch the analogies flow like rain here; or, better yet, like a never failing stream; much more biblical). You invest in your land and pick your crop. Then you work and re-work it until it’s ready to harvest. If you’re lucky, the rains hold off just long enough to get it undercover at the coop grain silo. After that, world affairs take over - if the harvest in Patagonia or Szechuan has been good (or som...

I am feeling totally whipped by this book, stretched and poked. Reviewers on Goodreads have said they quit after 50 pages or 100 pages, and I get that. They probably went out and did great things with the hours they saved. This strange book is, however, entirely readable even if it did not readily pull me in. I sighed early on and figured I had to know where Cohen was leading. I’m glad I made the investment, but it was a wild ride.For starters, the voice changes from time to time, and it takes a...