Joshua

This is a great book if you're an artist who went to art school and/or if you work in academia - biting and accurate personality profiles, and unflinchingly meticulous descriptions of university office politics - at least at the beginning. Sadly the narrative dives into a more predictable, heavy handed, and less specific plot with less realistic, more cartoonish characters. I wished it would have meandered in the lives of the more ordinary, bitter office workers. I got the feeling that someone told the author to hurry up and finish the book somewhere in the middle. I like the first person narration, however. It was interestingly noticeable that the reader never got to find out the viewpoint of the other characters, and was forced to be as blind as the main character.

Painful! The first hour and a half was great and funny, then he had a "robot" read some of it - which was not understandable. Not long after that, he had a band sing six pages of a list he had made of character ideas for indy movie directors. The idea was derivative - I've heard that on Adam Carolla - indy movie ideas... plus you couldn't understand what the band was saying. It was obvious that he was getting bored with his book, so he felt he had to put music and robot to it. We stopped 2 1/2 hours in. Also, at the beginning, the audio wasn't recorded well. You won't like it if you get it.