Regarding: Dilemma, First Impressions, and Eggers

Umm…topic #1: Dilemma-
My simple suggestion for the anti-scheduled-non-book-clubish-no-spoiler blogspot, is that we could potentially come up with a format for titling the posts. Something that would detour you from reading about something you had yet to read in the novel.

A logical suggestion would be something like “Regarding Chapter #X,” but seeing as I am still deciphering exactly how this book is organized, (and numbered chapters not being it) we could just break it down roughly to page numbers. If however page numbers is not enough, a clever “cute” Eggers style title can follow. This format just might work, being both informative and efficient for the quick-skimmer and the smart ass alike.

Take for instance the following:
Regarding xi – 3: Invitational Instructions and Erik’s love for Dave Eggers
Or my own potential post:
Up to page 42: I may or may not be in love with Wallace

Blogs about the more global/cosmic issues or might-be themes of the book can be non-specific-non-formatted titles resembling something more like discussion threads or questions. (I usually have more questions than constructive and/or cohesive thoughts.) That said: First Impressions. This could likewise be titled "Phillip busts Erik’s and Egger’s Chops" but you see the idea. Think it would work?

Phillip, I have a feeling you may be un-impressed, but I was forewarned - with a name like Katie and everything.

As far as Dave Eggers goes, I fall somewhere in between the spectrum of Erik and Phillip. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was refreshing, and Eggers had me pegged in the intro of Infinite Jest, approaching 25, madly in love with Sufjan Stevens and guilty of endlessly carrying around Jack Kerouac in my purse. Eggers did fail to mention that I frequently smell of a cadaver lab and am currently eating eggs with an Oct 10 expiration date in December, but otherwise he hit the highlights.

Eggers says, "We have an obligation, to ourselves, chiefly, to see what a brain, and particularly a brain like our own - that is, using the same effluvium we, too, swim through - is capable of." I sat in the airport on the way back from Thanksgiving Break hunkered into Wallace when the man I sat next to asked if I was reading a phone book. I laughed. And after we chatted for who knows how long, he remarked that if the brakes fail on landing we could toss Wallace out to drag us to a stop. He might be right, this mass of pages is a bit daunting, but Eggers said it, "...any book, but particularly a book like this, a book that gives so much, that required such sacrifice and dedication. Who would do such a thing if not for want of connection and thus of love?" And perhaps in our case why we not only are determined to read it, but write about it?

Needless to say I am pretty excited about all this, and if not for the need to both shower and see what a brain like my own can cram into before my final tomorrow I would ramble about the previously referenced 42 pages. But for what it is worth, I’ve put my two-cents out there.