Every Brautigan's book is a gem. I loved this one — but I still don't get why is it considered his best work. It is incredible — true. But is it the best? Nope. ( )

The Brautigan book in which my dream job exists.

This American Life on NPR did a great piece about this book, specifically the library portion of this book, which made me interested to read it. It's very short. I finished it in a few hours. It was an interesting perspective historically, had some interesting and quirky descriptions, but the guy meets girl plot and descriptions of Vida, are eye rolling and cringe worthy and really detract from the overall story. ( )

I wanted to like this book after hearing about it on the This American Life episode on libraries. The library described as being open 24 hours a day and allowing any submission of unpublished book being an interesting concept. However, this is a novel about an abortion from the perspective of a man where the female involved is so not flushed out that all we know about her is that she has a Barbie-esque body, with breasts that don't move. Her beauty is so great that there is risk of accident because people stare at her. This is like the fantasy of an adult male who lives in his mother's basement. No thank you. ( )

I'd heard good things about this author, but frankly I'm not really seeing what the hype's about. I read this book because it centers on a peculiar library. The story itself has no real plot, but is mostly a blow-by-blow of the day they go to Mexico for an abortion.

The main problem of the female protagonist is that she'e too beautiful. Don't you just hate having that problem? While she was impossible to sympathize with, the male lead was at least interesting for his odd commitment to a library job in which he was never paid, had to be open 24/7 (hence it had been years since he'd left the building), and which accepted only unpublished books that were hand-delivered to the library, placed on the shelf and never read. Odd, but intriguing. ( )