Audiobook8 hours
Taipei
Written by Tao Lin
Narrated by Kirby Heyborne
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
About this audiobook
Taipei by Tao Lin is an ode-or lament-to the way we live now. Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the Internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas. Along the way-whether on all-night drives up the East Coast, shoplifting excursions in the South, book readings on the West Coast, or ill-advised grocery runs in Ohio-movies are made with laptop cameras, massive amounts of drugs are ingested, and two young lovers come to learn what it means to share themselves completely. The result is a suspenseful meditation on memory, love, and what it means to be alive, young, and on the fringe in America, or anywhere else for that matter.
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Reviews for Taipei
Rating: 3.074712672413794 out of 5 stars
3/5
87 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Only pushed through to the end as I had purchased this for my kindle, and reading it on the subway was sometimes less grueling then sitting on the subway not reading anything. Seeing lots of fleeting references to local Brooklyn or other NYC places (many random references to Bobst Library, where I worked for 6 years, for example) and other contemporary cultural detritus (think is the first novel I've read that mentions Goodreads) helped pass the time, but this is dull writing about an unbelievably empty, seemingly autobiographical protagonist.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in a Goodreads giveaway.
This is a difficult review to write. I had high hopes for the book, and I wanted to like it. But I just couldn't get into it. I started and re-started it a few times, hoping I could get a fresh view of it and dive right in. Unfortunately, that just didn't happen.
I get the feeling that the author thinks that by exhaustively describing minute details, he'll win the "Show, Not Tell" game that high school English teachers everywhere want us to play. Instead, what's he done is create a lot of tedious detail that doesn't drive the story. There isn't much of a plot in the first place, so the focus is apparently supposed to be on enjoying the moment. However, the awkward relationships between the characters just didn't appeal to me.
While this book and I just didn't click, I'm sure it'll appeal to readers who really savor minute details. That's just not me (not even for classics like Proust). - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ted sat down at his computer to contemplate Taipei. He had finished reading it ten to twelve hours ago, after drinking approximately 200 ml of tea and staring out the window into the morning light. He felt ‘at odds with himself’ for this review, a combination of lingering guilt about disliking the book itself, and fear or affectation at the language, which triggered something within him. He felt himself grow colder and more despondent as the book went on, with specific phrases like “licked coke off his balls” making him more uncomfortable than he had any right to be. It was not that the act of licking was offensive, just that it made him nauseous. He decamped from the chair in his apartment, and wandered over to Starbucks, smoking one to three cigarettes between the front door of his apartment building, and the Starbucks, where he would work for the remainder of the day. That is the line between Truth and Fiction that Taipei draws. It is a narrative full of writers writing, people doing drugs, and a lot of generally what we would call millennial fuckup, but is probably just a little too old to actually be that. Tao Lin’s style is the beginning and end of why to read this book, and I attempted to emulate it above. There’s something about the language which can be infectious, putting you in the mindset of the characters more than any other prose I’ve encountered. This is not an interesting story, or a story about good characters, but it is a story that you can feel for yourself. A mixture of truth and fiction, forced onto a single worldview, and that is a remarkable feat. I’m not sure I will ever read another Tao Lin book, but I am happy that I have read one, and that it was this one.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stylistically interesting, but ultimately i felt the same about this as I do about the series "Girls". Yes, its well made. Yes, I believe its well observed. Yes, I believe people like this exist. Yes, its sometimes funny even if its mainly the humour of disgust. I just dont care about any of the characters. I find them irritating. I want Paul's mother to give Paul a slap. Or to lock him in his room.So this is basically what happens. Paul is a writer. What he writes we don't know. When he gets time to do it we don't know either. But he writes. He gives readings. Like the nauseating adolescent he is, he likes to take drugs at readings, ho hum. Otherwise he floats around aimlessly, observing his perceptions, taking increasingly vast quantities of prescription and non prescription drugs. He likes Adderall (a drug to treat ADHT) particularly. He meets a boy, Daniel. They take drugs and hangout. Then they stop. He splits up with his girlfriend Michelle for reasons unknown. He takes up with Laura. She loses interest. The reader sympathises with her. He takes up with Erin. They take industrial levels of MDMA and go to Vegas. They got to Taipei to visit Paul's parents and mostly visit McDonalds. They have some fun at the expense of the Taiwanese for not being as cool, or as off their tits, as they are. This is why the book is called Taipei you see . Because they visit Taipei. It should really be called BrooklynInteresting stylistically but just really irritating.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Tao Lin wants to be the 21st century Bret Easton Ellis, with Twitter, in New York City. Unfortunately, he isn't breaking any ground or saying anything that Less Than Zero didn't... in 1985. This book is well-written, but it felt superfluous to me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The first few pages of this felt labored and clumsy in a way that set my teeth on edge, but after a bit Lin settled into his appealingly affectless tone and I fell into the narrative. Ultimately, I think this is Lin's most accomplished novel to date, bringing together his flair for the absurd, clear-eyed take on the contemporary condition, and surprising flights of poetry in a way that feels thrillingly original. All that said, the narrative doesn't so much end as peter out after a while, our characters seemingly disappearing into a drug swamp.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inventive use of language! Beautiful, humorous, apt metaphors that unfurl in layers of declarative clauses, unleashing some sort of previously unknown virtuosic matter-of-fact wildness.