I (Again) Don't Know What to Get For Christmas

[esquizofrenico]

"The Infinite Jest" is one of my favourite books, I must say however that I did not fully understood it and that for me it had more appeal as a collection of short stories rather than a novel. If you expect a traditional novel, you are going to spent 3/4 of the book thinking about what has to do what is occurring with anything else in the story. Only until very late in the novel do the different threads start to converge.

[Red]

"The Infinite Jest" is one of my favourite books, I must say however that I did not fully understood it and that for me it had more appeal as a collection of short stories rather than a novel. If you expect a traditional novel, you are going to spent 3/4 of the book thinking about what has to do what is occurring with anything else in the story. Only until very late in the novel do the different threads start to converge.

Is it one of those books that's boring at first but then you can't really put it down once you get into it?

[esquizofrenico]

I loved it from the start, it's just what I said: not until the middle of the story does it start to make sense as a whole, and you can get lost easily. In fact, I've read some people that recommend reading before starting an annotation that you don't find until about the middle of the novel, because that way at least you get an idea of the chronological order of the different stories. I would only feel comfortable recommending the book to someone that enjoys short stories, because the likelihood that you cannot appreciate the story as a whole is high (as I said, I did not get most of its meaning until I read commentaries by other people).

[Red]

I loved it from the start, it's just what I said: not until the middle of the story does it start to make sense as a whole, and you can get lost easily. In fact, I've read some people that recommend reading before starting an annotation that you don't find until about the middle of the novel, because that way at least you get an idea of the chronological order of the different stories. I would only feel comfortable recommending the book to someone that enjoys short stories, because the likelihood that you cannot appreciate the story as a whole is high (as I said, I did not get most of its meaning until I read commentaries by other people).

Thanks for the heads up so I know what I'm gonna be getting into.
They say there are a lot of footnotes, does that get annoying to keep looking at the bottom of the page?

[esquizofrenico]

I loved it from the start, it's just what I said: not until the middle of the story does it start to make sense as a whole, and you can get lost easily. In fact, I've read some people that recommend reading before starting an annotation that you don't find until about the middle of the novel, because that way at least you get an idea of the chronological order of the different stories. I would only feel comfortable recommending the book to someone that enjoys short stories, because the likelihood that you cannot appreciate the story as a whole is high (as I said, I did not get most of its meaning until I read commentaries by other people).

Thanks for the heads up so I know what I'm gonna be getting into.
They say there are a lot of footnotes, does that get annoying to keep looking at the bottom of the page?

HAHAHAHA... The bottom of the page... That's a good one.

Some of the footnotes are dozens of pages long, so they don't fit at the bottom of the page. I suppose that in printed versions they put all of them at the end of the book. I think this is the perfect book for buying the digital version, is much more convenient, not having to go forwards and backwards continuously.

[Red]

HAHAHAHA... The bottom of the page... That's a good one.

Some of the footnotes are dozens of pages long, so they don't fit at the bottom of the page. I suppose that in printed versions they put all of them at the end of the book. I think this is the perfect book for buying the digital version, is much more convenient, not having to go forwards and backwards continuously.

Thanks for the heads up.. this oughta be good.

Personally though, I prefer printed books. I find it faster to read, and usually much easier to comprehend