I read only a few sentences in this book while browsing the library. all of the sentences were incorrect sentences. this did not please me.

"After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned" changed my life

I'm sorry, Dave Eggers. I am so, so sorry, because I love you (yes, personally), I love AHWOSG, I love You Shall Know Our Velocity, and I love What is the What. But I did not love this book. At first I just thought I didn't like the shift from novel to short story, but I can handle it from Wallace, Alexie, and Fitzgerald, so that can't be it. These are just not very well done. To be honest, I felt like Eggers was coasting on his success here. Once you've published something like AHWOSG, everyone...

Meh. An 00s word for a very 00s book. Like Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), it has a pre-lapsarian naivety: stories of middle-class white Americans who, before the crash, rarely worry about money, and who go on holiday to exotic locations and stay wrapped up in their own worlds. A narrative that is embarrassingly honest and likely accurate, but would be unfashionable and frequently vilified online now - especially as it doesn't actively signpost embarrassment and guilt as much as one

Dave Eggers... Years ago, I read the short story "After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned" (which just so happens to be in this collection) in Nick Hornby's collection Speaking With the Angel and enjoyed it. It wasn't my favorite piece in the collection, but I enjoyed it. I had never heard of Dave Eggers at that point.Shortly after that, I started hearing *a lot* about him. Friends were recommending him to me, I heard interviews on the radio, read reviews and many, many arguments. I...

The fact that Dave Eggers is a celebrated literary figure and writer is no secret but reading his work, especially How We Are Hungry, always feels like a very private act. The sparse, punchy prose drive to the heart of what people hunger for: love, acceptance, companionship, approval, that thing they feel will fill that growing hole in the soul. I’m not normally a massive fan of short story collections as I am often left feeling unfulfilled; if the idea and the story is good enough, I (selfishly...

I really enjoyed this book, but I'm a huge Dave Eggers fan. I'd probably enjoy reading Dave Eggers's grocery list. That said, some of these stories probably aren't as well thought out as an Eggers's grocery list, as he alternates 'legitimate' short stories with one-to-two page 'stories' that are little more than second drafts of a writing exercise.However, the stories that were good were quite good, and 'Quiet' and 'After I was Thrown Into the River and Before I Drowned' (which was my introducti...

A criticism I've heard about Dave Eggers is that his stories tend to be gimmicky, overly self-aware, unrealistic, jokey, or filled with dopey sentimentalism. Those criticisms may be true, but that doesn't prevent How We Are Hungry from being an absolutely great collection of short stories.Having now read three Eggers novels and two short story books, I think his writing style is especially suited toward short stories, where he has a compact space to explore ideas that might otherwise get tired i...

Like your wardrobe, this book is incohesive, comfortable, curious and cozy. Instead of getting furious because nothing fits together and it's impossible for you to create a suitable outfit, just pause, take a thoughtful second glance, and appreciate that despite it all, you own a collection of hand-selected garments that are individually interesting, eclectic, and varied. Not all of us can show up at the party lookin' all What is the What.I really liked the way the stories alternate from long, i...

Sure, not every short story here will move each reader, but even with the ones that make you think "okay...what was the point of that?" its hard to deny Dave Eggers' unique gift with words, his interesting and well-formed characters, and his admirable creativity when it comes to manifesting abstract ideas and emotions into the mind and heart of his readers.My favorite story, I think, was "Quiet" because it reached deep and resurrected some painfully real emotions on a personal level. I can't pro...

Yeah, this wasn't very good. I like Eggers' other stuff, and I love me some McSweeney's, but this - not so much. They seemed like rough drafts. There's even one (Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone) that has a great premise, but he doesn't actually write the story, he brainstorms how he would write the story. I know, I know, he's being very purposeful about all of this, I'm sure, but I don't think it makes for a very enjoyable reading experience. I wasn't interested in any of the c...

Ah Dave... I love this man's writing. I don't think I've ever read any of his short stories before and they are just as strange, varied and profound as his novels. His lyrical, casual and yet exacting writing style invites me in closer and then he succeeds in taking me somewhere I've never been before... into absurd conversations with parents, into a dog's joyous mind, into a man's cruel yet understandable desire; all people struggling to find themselves. This is always a pleasing journey for me...

A quick read but I don't think I get Dave Eggers. His prose sounds nice but what is he really trying to say? There's a lot about God but not in a way that's interesting or understandable to me. Maybe this is just mean snark but I find his long titles (anticorrelated to the length of the story itself) pretentious-sounding. Your milage may differ.I'm going to assume based on the title and the back of the book that this collection is supposed to elucidate something about our "animal" hungers versus...

Fiction Deflation.I wonder if I just don't get Dave Eggers. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is pretty much what the title suggests. One of the most unbelievable memoirs I've ever read. McSweeney's consistently puts out the most cutting edge mags and anthologies. They have the freshest ideas, synthesize combinations of avante-garde, interstitial, genre and academia. But then Eggers writes fiction and I feel like I'm missing something. It reads at a very surface level. To me it reads lik...

This is a mostly enjoyable collection of stores. There are moments when I felt like Mr. Eggers got a bit carried away with his conception of his own cleverness, as in "Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone". Come on, Mr. Eggers. Save it for your blog. People who are rabidly enamored of you may want to read stuff like that; I do not. I enjoyed "After I was Thrown Into the River and Before I Drowned" more than I thought I did. I was annoyed by "There are Some Things He Should Keep to H...