Today is FEBRUARY. Not related to the book, but just need to see it written out to believe it, I guess.
This book was…weird. Not bad weird; maybe sort of unsettling weird, but not bad. But there is no other way to describe it. Having no other way to describe it is, I guess, weird in and of itself, because the book is so, so descriptive.
The story idea is so mind-blowingly simple that you have to wonder how the book was even pitched and subsequently approved. It is about a man on his lunch break, riding an escalator from one floor to the next- that is not a simplification of the book but instead the legitimate premise of the book. The beauty comes in the descriptions Baker provides, with sincere and earnest exploration of motivations behind every seemingly insignificant moment of the experience.
The book is done almost entirely in footnotes, which start about 65% of the way through the book. Now, I’m a big fan of the footnote. My first graduate program forced me to write MLA style, with in-text citations, which I hated, as I learned the unique pleasure of creating multiple half-page footnotes in my undergraduate thesis. Here, they were used to further explore these small moments- expertly, I’d say.
Weird book? Yes. Worthwhile book? For 150 pages of your life, for sure.
You’ll like this if: you like really detailed looks at really mundane things. It’s the type of book that probably everyone should read in order to gain more of an appreciation for what’s around us that we don’t notice and how our belief systems/habits have been created.
Happy reading!
carlyreads 