This Is Where I Leave You

Will someone please read This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper with me? I'm only on page 71. You could catch up. It's very light. You're looking at a commitment of like a day and a half, max.

A lot of the popular fiction I pick up lately reads like a movie deal is already in the works and this book is no different, but it's awfully funny and captures specific moments of contemporary life with crazy accuracy. There is one occasion where Tropper equates Victoria's Secret with La Perla, which is completely ridiculous, but I can forgive that.

Here's the protagonist describing his perspective on marriage early on:

"We knew marriage could be difficult in the same way that we knew there were starving children in Africa. It was a tragic fact but worlds away from our reality. We were going to be different. We would keep the fire stoked; best friends who fucked each other senseless every night. We would avoid the pitfalls of complacency; stay young at heart and in shape, keep our kisses long and deep and our bellies flat, hold hands when we walked, conduct whispered conversations deep into the night, make out in movie theaters, and go down on each other with undimmed enthusiasm until the arthritic limitations of old age made it inadvisable." (p14)

And listen to how he characterizes his college love life:

"I knew that she was much too pretty and well-adjusted for me. Over the last few years, I had carved out a niche for myself on campus among the screwed-up girls with dark lipstick and too many earrings, who worked through their mixed bag of childhood traumas by drinking excessively and having sex with unthreatening Jewish guys with ridiculous hair. This had actually happened exactly twice in as many years, but since it was all the action I'd seen, I liked to think of it as a niche." (p54)

On his expectations for the future:

"And I can feel that miserable future hurtling toward me at high speed, thundering across the plains in a cloud of dust like a wildebeest stampede." (p67)

I know, Judd Foxman, tell me about it.

It's really a very funny book so far and I want other people to read it so we can talk about it. I probably need a book group, don't I? W is in a very chic book group that meets at restaurants and goes away to beach houses together. I'm looking for something a little different. I want one where you meet for three hours, once a week, in a small room with florescent overhead lights and, once you talk about the book, write a paper on it.

I know. Issues.

Hey, Diane Rehm did a show about A Room with a View today. That's both my favorite book and favorite movie. I'm going to listen to the podcast in the car tomorrow. And I guess for some reason I feel like the internet needs to know that.

So, seriously, This Is Where I Leave You. Read it.