Eric Smith (10)

2023 read. Read after hearing about the book from a local source. Gave me a huge Fleetwood Mac ear worm from my college days. Liked learning some new places in Philly, but overall, I think I was not the target reader for this. Will pass it on via Hilltop books hopefully to a more receptive (age wise) reader. I will say it was nice to see parents make stupid mistakes, and know I am not alone in this.

PS I did go to the area where the book takes place, 3rd and Market in Old City, and visit some of the other shops that actually exist and are mentioned in the story (ie Omoi (Japanese Stationary) and Menagerie Coffee. Nice finds!… (mais)

This is a really good book in search of a copy editor. I very much liked the book - it was quirky, fun, kept me engaged, not predictable at all, and Eric Smith had a great voice in his writing. So it was a bit disheartening to be periodically thrown out of the story by a missing comma, or a "through" instead of "threw." However, minor quibble. I acknowledge that I am overly anal when it comes to things of a grammar nature, so I deal with it and move on.

Textual Healing has a plot straight out of a screwball romantic comedy, only I don't think even Hollywood could have come up with some of the supporting characters here. It is the story of a once-famous author who is suffering from one-hit-wonderdom. And then his life falls apart. His long-time girlfriend leaves him, his best-selling book is collecting dust in the clearance section (way way WAY discounted), his used bookstore is sinking about as fast as the Titanic, and he gets tricked into joining a support group for lapsed writers. But then, enters a girl (there's always a girl, isn't there?), Hannah, who doesn't run away screaming from the weirdness in his life - such as the flower-shop-owning, haiku-spouting ninja; or the apartment-destroying sugar glider. (Intrigued yet?) I won't say more because it will spoil the plot.

Was this book perfect? No. I wasn't hipster enough to fully enjoy all the references to hipstery things, so I probably missed out on something there. The writing was also a little rough around the edges and could have used another couple rounds of editing and some tough love "Dude, lay off the pop culture references. You'll only date the story later."

I am glad I read it, though. And I've now killed any desire I might have ever had to own sugar gliders. Not that I had much - two rabbits and a cat are destructive enough as it is.

Review copy courtesy of the author… (mais)

Oh, me, oh, my. So seeing as I really did just read this book in less time than a day again (though not as fast as a Gayle Foreman, Alexandra Harvey, Rowling, etc) I definitely think this needs reviewing pretty much on the spot. I really want to be able to give this book five stars, because it is a truly, adorably, fabulous little book *but* (and I want to start with these to knock them out of the way as possible), this is a niche book and it gets it down a level for me.

Especially because you will not find the following in the pages of the book listed --

1. Advice and commentary on either being/or looking to date in the LGBTQIAAP realm. (For those of you not in the wide sexology referencing know, these stand for 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, allies, and panseuxal' and that's only the beginning of the alphabet soup). But you won't find except one sneeze of a reference titled 'I think my dates a guy...' and it's not framed positively, but it is tiny.

2. Nor will you find advice for the Geek Girl looking to date. Or the Geek Boy and what he should do with having stumbled on to the rampantly more obvious in the day and age Geek Girl, and how to date her.

I was disappointed on both counts, because I was enamored and in love with the cover from first glance, and wanted to find things I identified with in here. Which happens to be in both of those boxes, as well as several pieces of what I found in the book. This book is very specifically for the (White) Awkward (Straight) Male Geek toward the Modern (Likely Not Geeky) Woman. (Maybe even specifically the one born in the eighties and raised in the ninty's).


BUT WAIT. Don't turn away now!


It *is* a niche book, but it's an amazing book for being a niche book!

I spent this entire book smiling, shaking my head in fondness, cackling at all the references I caught everywhere and laughing at how ingeniously the whole thing was framed to be given to heteronormative boys/men. There are so many references to movies, tv shows, games, books, comics, that you are almost drowning in them. But it's the perfect kind of drowning where you don't want to come up.

The Player One title the whole way through and the no-nonsense approach to all of it is killer. From how to befriend, to how to ask, to how to deal with marriage and/or break-ups. I'm going to be picking up a handful of copies for people at Christmas, don't you doubt me.… (mais)