From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

Start date: January 1, 2021

Finish date: March 31, 2021

Discussion: Fiction Group Reads

Discussion leader: Christopher

Why we're reading this: January 2021 Group Read.
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Fiction Group Reads

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What Members Thought

Aug 02, 2010 El rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books-list, cuckoos, big-effing-books, society-went-boom, 20th-centurylit-late

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln decided that the fourth Thursday of each November would be recognized nationally as Thanksgiving. Today happens to be the fourth Thursday in November. Happy Thanksgiving.

I would like to give thanks to the fact that I finished this mother-effing book today.

It's now 9:40 EST as I start to write this review. I finished reading approximately five hours ago. Since then I have polished off almost an entire bottle of Chardonnay. It's taken me this long to a) get a nice enough bu ...more

142 likes · Like · see review

Jul 05, 2011 Christopher rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american, 1000-pages-or-more, satire, future-classics, fiction, postmodern, modern-classics, 500-pages-or-more, bildungsroman, 20th-century

UPDATED REVIEW from second reading, April 2021:
When I finished this book the first time, I swore I wouldn't read it again. I loved it, I put it on my favorites shelf, but it was just too much, too long, too intense to ever read it again. But here we go, nearly a decade later, and I've just finished my second reading. I'm pretty sure this will be the last time, but who knows?

I didn't like it as much. I gave it five stars the first time. This time around, I'd give it three stars, but let's split t ...more

45 likes · Like · see review

Jun 13, 2009 Petra rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, effort-required-but-so-worth-it

Aug/12: At this point, I’m learning a lot about tennis, its competitive nature (or the competitiveness that is drummed into the players during training), AA, a titch about depression (one of the best descriptions I’ve read on how it feels to be depressed). The writing is sometimes easy to follow, sometimes rather convoluted, sometimes super funny and sometimes tedious. It’s a bit of a roller-coaster ride.

Have put this book back on the shelf. Will get back to it one day.

Dec 30/12: starting again ...more

19 likes · Like · see review

Jun 29, 2012 Sera rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, 1001-books, own, literary-fiction

This book took me forever to read. I read 25 other books during the 6 months that I worked my way through this book. Reading this book was really an experience and not a passive one either. Just carrying this tome around made my upper arms more tone, not to mention how nimble my fingers became in flipping back and forth from the book text to the footnotes.

DFW really did something different with this book, and I appreciated the devotion that he gave to the book and to the development of his char ...more

5 likes · Like · see review

Mar 10, 2009 Cait marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, owned, big-ones-aka-doorstoppers, i-cant-believe-i-havent-read-it-yet

Ugh, 2 false starts. Third time's gonna be the charm... ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 05, 2011 Alasse marked it as pause · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, haloperidol

Just not right now.

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 01, 2014 Lori rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: zy-own, z-reviewed, zy-calibre, fiction, literature, z-5-star, pre-2000, z-first-time-5-star

Authors I thought of while reading this: Kurt Vonnegut, John Scalzi, Donna Tartt Laurence Sterne.

I now understand why people love DFW's work. He was a magnificent writer.

Surprisingly easy to read. If the whole 'magnum opus' thing scares you, ignore it. Yes it's very long, but you can think of it as a series combined into one book. If you run into a word you don't know, you can get the meaning from the surrounding words. DFW does like multisyllabic Latinate synonyms, some of which he apparently m ...more

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