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Title: Room Temperature: A Novel by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0-679-73440-6 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Breath
Comment: Room Temperature is certainly about a father and his child, but there is so much more. In typical Baker style, he examines minutia with elucidating commentary. This, in itself, is worth reading the novel; however, the quality that makes it transcend happens to be his ability to unite the entire book with its central theme: Breath. From the comma, to the mobile in his child's room, to tuba lessons, breath pervades - breath as its metaphor to remember to cherish every moment.
I have never seen a novel so effortlessly and imperceptibly weave a central idea throughout a book. Read this novel for both it compelling insight but also for the extraordinary literary technique.
Rating: 2
Summary: Sophomore Jinx
Comment: A major disappointment after The Mezzanine. Baker goes to the well once too often by trying to recreate that excellent book here. That first book seemed to avoid crossing over into pretentiousness by giving us a self-deprecating narrator and by simply pouring on the wit and intelligent observations and forcing you to laugh. Here, pretentiousness and self-indulgence abound. The subject matter is just far too personal to connect with the reader and, simply, it seems that Nick didn't try as hard the second time around. If you enjoyed the pretentious and turgid essay "Lumber," then this might be for you, but if you were drawn to this book after reading more engaging Baker fare such as U and I, The Mezzanine or Vox, stay away.
Rating: 4
Summary: praise for attention to details in "whatever" world
Comment: I have read all of Mr.Bakers books, and with the exception of "The Everlasting Story..." (which indeed did seem to be everlasting) have read them with delight. Although he's often compared to Updike, I think he surpasses him due to his wit and his more creative sense of the strangeness of life. In "Room Temperature" we find the antidote, along with his other novels, to a modern world obsessed with speed, impersonal technology and the summational catchphrase "whatever". How wonderful it is to see an author bend his mind and spirit to the details of life with so much talent and fervor. And how wonderful to see that his books, plotless and demanding of full attention as they are, sell so well. It gives me hope for our civilization; it really does. On a sidenote - I am tired of critics and readers thinking he is cheapening his prose by writing on sexual topics. Sex is one of the most universal and fascinating and character-revealing subjects around; a great writer can make anything cerebral and holy, and a writer needs to go where his passions lie. Besides, do we really want every novel to be about rubber bands and bathroom hot air dryers?
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Title: The Mezzanine (Vintage Contemporaries (Paperback)) by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0679725768 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1990 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Fermata by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0679759336 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: A Box of Matches: A Novel by NICHOLSON BAKER ISBN: 0375502874 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0679776249 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Vox: A Novel by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0679742115 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1995 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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