Everything Is Illuminated

After I finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close I decided that I needed to read Jonathan Safran Foer’s first book Everything is Illuminated. For once no one suggested the book; I managed to pick it out all on my own.

Everything Is Illuminated is another about a young man, also named Jonathan Safran Foer, who travels to the Ukraine to look for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He’s accompanied in his journey by two people Alex, his translator and Alex’s grandfather, who is also named Alex, his driver. That’s the simple version of the story. It is told through the letters Alex writes to Jonathan, Alex’s version of the journey, and Jonathan’s story of his grandfather’s history.

Alex’s letters and chapters are very amusing and his imperfect English is convincing. I enjoyed his evolution over the course of the book. I was less thrilled with Jonathan’s chapters. The story of Trachimbrod was both funny and tragic, but it was also odd and occasionally difficult to follow. I know it was purposefully surreal, but sometimes it was gratuitously so.

In general I liked the book, but it didn’t come close to the brilliance of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I felt like this was Foer’s warm up novel where he worked out the kinks in his technique. Both books have similar themes and a similar style, but I think Foer’s second attempt is more effective. I’m interested in checking out the movie if only because I can’t imagine how it could work.

On a different but related topic, I recently read about a book called 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die by Peter Boxall on LibraryThing. I don’t know that I’ll strive to read them all, but I think the book sound interesting and it could be a good way to find new books to read. Someone on the site has created a handy spreadsheet to check off the books you’ve read and has equations that indicate what percentage that is and how many of them you’d have to read a year to read them all before you die. In case anyone is curious, I’ve read 46 of the books, which is 4.6% and I would have to read an average of 18 a year to read them all before I die. That’s just a bit morbid, isn’t it?

Lists like this must be taken for what they are, someone’s opinion, but I enjoy reading them anyway. I’m interested in looking at the book to see the reasoning behind putting some books on the list. For example, I'm surprised that The Shining is included, but not The Stand, which I think is far superior, not only as far as King’s novels, but also as a book in general. Of course I also would place Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close on the list instead of Everything is Illuminated. Anyway, I’m interested in learning more about the books that I’ve never heard of and I’m always looking for something new to read.