sarah_of_bramblewood's review against another edition
5.0
Lovely writing. It's almost like a meditation. Especially touching now that I have a little Bug, myself.
szeglin's review against another edition
4.0
I think I liked The Mezzanine better, but the relationship details in this novel are very touching and make the novel feel more personal.
brain_storm's review against another edition
4.0
Alexander loves it, too. He pulls it off the shelf and says, "Chiz," which is Budgiespeak for Cheerios (pictured on the cover).
stewreads's review against another edition
3.0
A man rocks his newborn to sleep for 20 minutes, and we read his every thought in that span of time. In theory, this is a great opportunity for the usual Baker-isms - the author's rambling, overlong digressions on the minutiae of modern life that have made me love his work so far. However, this one just didn't do it for me.
It's frustrating because I can see exactly what Baker is going for here: a sweet book on the tedium and adventure of new fatherhood and family, peppered with witty digressions and lots of dancing-around-the-point-but-that-dance-becomes-the-point. And I do think it is a very sweet book, a very personal experiment - but I quickly found myself losing interest in these five-page paragraphs about nose picking and peanut butter. The Mezzanine and Vox are two of the funniest novels I've ever read, but Room Temperature lacks the same oomph, although it makes complete sense as the book that came between them.
Still, it's onward with Baker. He hasn't dropped in my estimation at all; I just wish I could have connected with this one a bit more.
It's frustrating because I can see exactly what Baker is going for here: a sweet book on the tedium and adventure of new fatherhood and family, peppered with witty digressions and lots of dancing-around-the-point-but-that-dance-becomes-the-point. And I do think it is a very sweet book, a very personal experiment - but I quickly found myself losing interest in these five-page paragraphs about nose picking and peanut butter. The Mezzanine and Vox are two of the funniest novels I've ever read, but Room Temperature lacks the same oomph, although it makes complete sense as the book that came between them.
Still, it's onward with Baker. He hasn't dropped in my estimation at all; I just wish I could have connected with this one a bit more.
pehall's review against another edition
4.0
Not quite the job, if I might say so, that is either Box of Matches or Mezzanine, but, nonetheless, a finely crafted, though idiosyncratically punctuated, piece of plotless prose, so could this be classed as fiction (novel, novello or novelletto)?
beepbeepbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Nicholson Baker could describe surgery as symphony. Each book is a beautiful reverie of a certain place and time, and the encounters that change people. So so good.
kevinsmokler's review against another edition
4.0
You gotta love Nicholson Baker's thing -- hyper-localized, funny flirty takes on the mundanities of life like air nozzles and toilet paper, but this study of a new father feeding his new baby a bottle is about as warm and charming as it sounds if you can imagine drilling that deep into it. If you can, you're in the hand s of both the master and inventor of the game.
phthadani's review against another edition
3.0
I truly adore Baker’s stream of consciousness writing style and how he connect the character’s past memories and present actions together in this book. Quite an interesting book.
ampersunder's review against another edition
5.0
Super amazing. Very similar in style to The Mezzanine, but centred around love and childhood memories and composing music and the sound of writing and commas -- compassionate and full of wonder for what love can be compared to the more technical, everydayness of The Mezzanine (or am I misremembering it?). Baker circles between past and present across themes and connects memories and thoughts and moments in beautiful ways.
The book describes itself in the following passage from chapter 5:
"The artificial frog permanently influenced my theory of knowledge: I certainly believed, rocking my daughter on this Wednesday afternoon, that with a little concentration one's whole life could be reconstructed from any single twenty-minute period randomly or almost randomly selected; that is, that there was enough content in that single confined sequence of thoughts and events and the setting that gave rise to them to make connections that would proliferate backward until potentially every item of autobiographical interest -- every pet theory, minor observation, significant moment of shame or happiness -- could be at least glancingly covered; but you had to expect that a version of your past arrived at this way would exhibit, like the unhealthily pale frog, certain telltale differences of emphasis from the past you would recount if you proceeded serially, beginning with 'I was born on January 5, 1957,' and letting each moment give birth naturally to the next. The particular cell you started from colored your entire re-creation."
The book describes itself in the following passage from chapter 5:
"The artificial frog permanently influenced my theory of knowledge: I certainly believed, rocking my daughter on this Wednesday afternoon, that with a little concentration one's whole life could be reconstructed from any single twenty-minute period randomly or almost randomly selected; that is, that there was enough content in that single confined sequence of thoughts and events and the setting that gave rise to them to make connections that would proliferate backward until potentially every item of autobiographical interest -- every pet theory, minor observation, significant moment of shame or happiness -- could be at least glancingly covered; but you had to expect that a version of your past arrived at this way would exhibit, like the unhealthily pale frog, certain telltale differences of emphasis from the past you would recount if you proceeded serially, beginning with 'I was born on January 5, 1957,' and letting each moment give birth naturally to the next. The particular cell you started from colored your entire re-creation."
gglazer's review against another edition
1.0
This little slip of a book spans only 20 minutes, during which Baker is rocking his infant daughter to sleep. It's really pretentious and really self-aggrandizing. And pedantic. And yucky. And did I mention pretentious.
I was hoping for a meditation on fatherhood from a male perspective, and I suppose I got that. This book certainly couldn't have been written by a woman; the time Baker spends writing about his wife's body vs. the time he spends writing about the actual baby we're supposed to believe is in his arms... yup, definitely not written by a mother. Blech.
I was hoping for a meditation on fatherhood from a male perspective, and I suppose I got that. This book certainly couldn't have been written by a woman; the time Baker spends writing about his wife's body vs. the time he spends writing about the actual baby we're supposed to believe is in his arms... yup, definitely not written by a mother. Blech.