Friday, November 14, 2014

A Crazy, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny, Time Travel, Science Fiction Novel You Will Love


Off the Shelf
By Suzanne Donahue    |   Thursday, November 13, 2014
This book was published the year I started working as an assistant at Simon & Schuster. Everyone was quite excited about it and I believe it hit the bestseller list. It was also one of the first books I took home for free. Imagine making absolutely nothing but getting to take home hardcover books whenever you wanted. It was a perk I never imagined when I got the job and it’s one I still love.

I think I liked this book initially because it was free but I loved it as soon as I started reading it and it has stuck with me for years. I gave away that first edition to someone I don’t even remember and over the years have given away many subsequent copies as well (another perk of working in publishing) but I never kept a copy for myself. The story was so lodged in my head I didn’t ever need to re-read it. But if you are reviewing something, it’s always good to have it to hand so I borrowed a yellowed mass-market paperback from a friend. Even in a crinkly odd-smelling ancient copy, the story is still the great one I remembered.

Certain parts of it, the dead man trying desperately to make a call to his sister, the couch that is stuck halfway up the stairs with a computer program running 24/7 trying to figure out how to get it unstuck are two of the saddest and funniest things I think I have ever read.

















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