My Rating: 3 stars
This will be a very short review because, well, I’ve never read a
book that consists entirely of “lists” before and I honestly don’t know the
best way to go about reviewing this one.
On the one hand, I applaud the author Matthew Dicks’ creativity in
telling Dan’s story entirely through the lists he compiles in his journal,
where he talks about candidly about everything happening in his life from his
anxiety towards impending fatherhood to his insecurity with his marriage and
not being able to measure up to his wife’s dead first husband, to his regrets
over the various decisions he’s made, etc.
I liked the premise, though didn’t like the characters very much (with
the exception of Bill Donovan – loved that guy!), however I do feel that Dicks
did a good job in the way he was still able to strike an emotional balance to
the story (some parts made me laugh and some parts had me near tears) despite
the lack of actual narrative prose. On
the other hand though – after a while, the “list” format became way too much,
to the point of being overkill; also, some of the lists were way too long and
were about things I was not even remotely interested in, such as “rules of
gunfighting” and “Newton’s list of sins” and the complete (I think?) lyrics to
a song named Code Monkey, etc. – I actually skimmed a lot of these sections, as
my mind was already starting to wander after just reading one or two bullet
points. I was interested in Dan’s story,
but I felt some of these longer lists (ones that I felt weren’t all that
necessary) detracted from the story.
I honestly think that I would’ve enjoyed this one more if the list
thing had been scaled back a bit and perhaps turning it more into a hybrid
format with a few pages of narrative pose interspersed throughout so it would
feel a little more connected and a little less all-over-the-place.
Overall though, this WAS a fun read (and a quick one of course) and
even though it wasn’t necessarily a format I preferred, I did appreciate
getting to try something different for a change.
Received ARC from St. Martin’s Press via Edelweiss.
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