Read This And _______

Here's the thing. I read, a whole lot. And I'm not just talking about all the Google Reader and Gawker action I get into at work. I mean actual, hard-cover books, magazines, and piles of newspapers. I believe that I am single-handedly keeping the print industry alive.

I always want to tell people about these things that I read, but my A.D.D. (I'm convinced I have it) prevents me from doing so.

So, here you go. A first stab at a KVB book review.

Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart

Set in post-literate America, (with a beginning in Rome), this story follows sad old(er) man Lenny and the purported love of his life, 24-year-old boyish-bodied, shallow and retail-addicted Eunice. To be brief, it has elements of books like The Giver and Brave New World, but in a world that is much more familiar to us. Many things strike me as frightening in this book - but, knowing me, I'm probably not scared at the normal things.

What should frighten me is that, in this book, the United States is in the shitter. We're deeply in debt to China. The dollar is pegged to the yuan and therefore almost meaningless, the mashup of the Department of Homeland Security and TSA (here called the American Restorative Authority) is more invasive than ever, and there are massive Halliburton-like companies involved in intricate government conspiracies.

This should frighten me, but because the only political science class I took was the one that all the athletes took, it doesn't bother me as much as the other aspect of post-literate America depicted here.

Ready? Here it is. In this book, people communicate largely by apparat, small electronic devices that cool and trendy people wear around their necks. (Older, less hip people have more obsolete tablet-like models.) Their data streams (including credit scores and things like "Male Hotness" and "Fuckability" levels) are easily viewed by the people in their immediate vicinity, and comments made on these levels are instantly connected to your personal data stream. Lenny has a hard time dealing with all this, and would prefer to read actual books, but has to keep up appearances with all the young people at his office, so he tries very hard to read all the data he can. Everything you could ever need is on these apparat devices, from news to work alerts. (Start sounding familiar?) People broadcast their lives without paying attention to the people who are physically there. Young women ignore their friends and browse online shops all day. Everyone is consumed by their technology.

Terrifying, right? And I'm not even getting into the (truly a bit odd) love story bit.

What the NY Times Book Review said: "In recounting the story of Lenny and Eunice in his antic, supercaffeinated prose, Mr. Shteyngart gives us his most powerful and heartfelt novel yet — a novel that performs the delightful feat of mashing up an apocalyptic satire with a genuine supersad true love story."

What I say: It made me want to live without my iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, or a computer for a week. (Clearly didn't last very long, but you get my drift.)