Wednesday 27 February 2013

What is the What ?

What is the what?, by Dave Eggers. But what is the what? I don't get it. Is there even supposed to be a 'what' or is it just there to make the title of the book seem deep. Maybe there is a what, and maybe the book doesn't say what it is, like, the true meaning of it, but you need to use what you read in the story to somehow figure it out yourself. Maybe what is the what.

Right now I'm at the end of Book 1. What I've really enjoyed about the story so far is that Dave describes the scenes so vividly that you can actually imagine yourself experiencing the situation. All the descriptions are so long and non-fiction like, as if Achak actually did remember the feelings and terror he had felt and all those horrible nights and days, running for his life. He remembered how it felt when him and the Lost Boys did the trek to Ethiopia. It seems like what happened in the past is something that is permanently engraved in his head, and so he can actually describe everything to Dave Eggers to write out.

My progress so far with the book is so far so good, but I'm struggling with the annotating. I mean, I know when I come across a 'bomb' but other times, I barely know what to write on my sticky note. Am I supposed to write a short summary of a page that's important, my thoughts, or something else? I have to reread a whole 100 pages again because I didn't annotate on them. -.-