You Shall Know Our Velocity

You Shall Know Our Velocity
By Dave Eggers

David Eggers wrote the screenplay to Away we Go which I have not seen yet. I had started this book years ago and Icouldn't get through it.

Readers Block - I invented this word as I guess I was blocked when I read this. I was probably going through a hard time or something. Well these are easier times to get through books.

You Shall Know Our Velocity is thought provoking and funny as hell. Two friends are given a bunch of money they really do not want and set out on a trip around the world to give it away.

I was discussing this book with my wife and we are thinking of making a similar trip in the near (not so distant) future.

Just the sponteneity and cast of characters encountered are intoxicating and Eggers does an excellent job of describing the pace and mood of each destination. it reads kind of like a sane Hunter S Thompson novel (thats oxi-impossible)

"...And there is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people."

This novel does just that, it encourages us to move and see the world, it tugs us to push the envelope and have fun along the way.

Notes

On the other hand, Eggers is a hero to writers. At least, he's a hero to me, bucking his publishers, firing his agents, demanding this and that as he travels around -- I love the guy. It's a reliable measure of his ego, I guess, that when he formed his own publishing company he called it "McSweeney's Books" and not "Eggers' Books," and that his foundation to teach writing to underprivileged children in San Francisco -- where he lives, damn it -- isn't called "The Eggers Project" but "826 Valencia," after its address. I doubt I'd have the energy to do what Eggers does even if I weren't twice his age, or feeling like it when I look at his résumé.