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The Choke Artist: Confessions of a Chronic Underachiever
In this brutally honest collection of often cringe-inducing episodes, David Yoo perfectly captures the cycle of failure and fear from childhood through adulthood. Whether he's wearing four layers of clothing to artificially beef up his slim frame, routinely testing highlighters against his forearm to see if he indeed has yellow skin, or preemptively sabotaging promising relationships to avoid being compared to former boyfriends, Yoo celebrates and skewers the insecurities of anxious people everywhere.
272 pages, Paperback
First published June 19, 2012
10 people are currently reading
225 people want to read
About the author
David Yoo
18 books41 followersDavid Yoo's first collection of essays, The Choke Artist: Confessions of a Chronic Underachiever (Grand Central) is out June 19, 2012. He is a graduate from Skidmore College with an MA from the University of Colorado-Boulder. His first novel, Girls For Breakfast (Delacorte) was a Booksense Pick, an NYPL Books For the Teen Age selection, and a Reading Rants Top Ten Books for Teens choice. He lives in Massachusetts, where he regularly plays adult soccer and Sega Genesis and teaches fiction at the Gotham Writers' Workshop.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
June 12, 2012
What a pleasure to read this. It's been a long time since I laughed this hard. Remember the first time you saw Colbert, and laughed your ass off and marveled at how you'd never heard anything quite like him? Well David Yoo is completely different than that--and anything else you have likely encountered.
It's great to discover such a stirring voice, mining material I'd never considered before. Each new episode explores darker territory--shot through with surprising moments of insight, laughter and light.
It's great to discover such a stirring voice, mining material I'd never considered before. Each new episode explores darker territory--shot through with surprising moments of insight, laughter and light.
September 20, 2012
The Age of Anxiety:
Crisis-Lite in The Choke Artist
Demetri Martin has a joke that seems appropriate for considering David Yoo’s The Choke Artist : “I like digital cameras. Because they enable you to reminisce immediately. …Just like [making a camera shutter sound] …look at us—we were so young, standing right there, wow. Where does the minute go?” If we used The Choke Artist to answer the question of whether a 30-something can write a decent—compelling, engaging, memorable, inspiring—memoir/autobiographical essay collection on events s/he just lived through, the short answer would seem to be, “not really.” It’s just not soup yet: not enough time has passed to understand which stories are truly formative and important, and there’s a certain level of absurdity of trying to meditate on mostly typical rites of passage—especially when not so removed from them.
For our protagonist, those adolescent agonies and twentysomething trials would include growing up Korean in a heavily white Connecticut town; shying away from excelling at any activities, academic or otherwise, in the way his type-A sister did; skating through college; and worrying about whether he’s getting too complacent with temping and on-again-off-again writing on the side. Though there is a lot of humor and some excellent turns of phrase, they’re buried due to a nonlinear narrative structure that has us jumping around through this otherwise pretty basic chronology that typifies much of the Gen X/Y experience. The nonlinear structure leads to a lot of repetition to ground us, which is more distracting than stylistically innovative. It’s almost as though Yoo is afraid we’d abandon him if we were lead through eras in his life in a more straightforward way (after all, writing about life is often more enjoyable and exciting than living it).
Style will only take you so far, and one wonders what this collection would have looked like if it came out two or five years from now, had the time and space to breathe. Not quite memoir, not quite humor, it is more a selection of comic, interconnected, autobiographical essays, each self-sufficient enough (and read like they were designed for) for bookstore readings. The problem is, put side by side, we get our instant reminiscing fix, but we're overwhelmed, with the recapping of some basic stuff more thanbis necessary in order to achieve that self-contained aspect. A little creative editing and restructuring would have gone a long way. Again, though the voice is clearly at times witty and charming, it is unclear why there is the compulsion to convey experiences that are, in and of themselves, not extraordinary.
It’s understandable that Yoo doesn’t want to take on either burden of representing or analyzing his ethnic identity too much—this is about him coming to define himself as an individual generally, and as an artist specifically. That’s fine. However, there are enough references to his Korean heritage—including a notable incident where he realizes his parents have taken a kind of surrogate son under their wing—to make not touching on family dynamics in more than a broad-strokes way jarring. And in this context over ethnic anxiety, Amy Chua’s blurb is even more ambiguous.
A glance at the back cover and front matter reveals that Yoo is a moderately successful young-adult author: but there’s a strict curtain cut across any discussion of how he made that part of himself come to life, as though those accomplishments would undercut the “confessions of a chronic underachiever” subtitle. Failure is a part of life, and though we gain some insight (way too late into the book) on some reasons as to why he has become such a self-effacing person in response to the ever-present pressures to succeed, it is never altogether clear that he is a failure or even, as he maintains, a choke artist: even in what could be, at most, a kind of dysthymia, the rent gets paid, he snags a live-in girlfriend, and he is writing, despite not measuring up to, say, the anxiety-inducing success of former high-school classmates with those quaint things, full-time gigs. Where’s the beef?
It’s hard enough to get people to believe the idea of a “quarterlife crisis” –that post-college, what-do-I-do-with-myself malaise/anxiety secret sauce—is a real thing; when this very real angst is portrayed in broad, breezy, self-aware strokes, it’s even more difficult to relate. Even in humor, the characters have to take themselves seriously enough to allow us to become emotionally invested in them—a certain gravitas to bring the absurdity of circumstances into relief. But we’re consistently kept at arm’s length.
Perhaps, in the end, what’s most disappointing about The Choke Artist is the very way it leaves the reader hanging, squarely in the present moment (or close to it)—the epiphanic transformation from slacker to writer (and writer-I-secretly-always-was, natch) is rushed, and incomplete: the film is ending, but there’s no closure—which means this will certainly be optioned for today’s attention-span-limited audiences, who crave entertainment over meaning, as though art were a zero-sum game. We are just as ambivalent at the end as at the beginning—about everything: writing, love, a person’s place in the world, and matters of identity.
Crisis-Lite in The Choke Artist
Demetri Martin has a joke that seems appropriate for considering David Yoo’s The Choke Artist : “I like digital cameras. Because they enable you to reminisce immediately. …Just like [making a camera shutter sound] …look at us—we were so young, standing right there, wow. Where does the minute go?” If we used The Choke Artist to answer the question of whether a 30-something can write a decent—compelling, engaging, memorable, inspiring—memoir/autobiographical essay collection on events s/he just lived through, the short answer would seem to be, “not really.” It’s just not soup yet: not enough time has passed to understand which stories are truly formative and important, and there’s a certain level of absurdity of trying to meditate on mostly typical rites of passage—especially when not so removed from them.
For our protagonist, those adolescent agonies and twentysomething trials would include growing up Korean in a heavily white Connecticut town; shying away from excelling at any activities, academic or otherwise, in the way his type-A sister did; skating through college; and worrying about whether he’s getting too complacent with temping and on-again-off-again writing on the side. Though there is a lot of humor and some excellent turns of phrase, they’re buried due to a nonlinear narrative structure that has us jumping around through this otherwise pretty basic chronology that typifies much of the Gen X/Y experience. The nonlinear structure leads to a lot of repetition to ground us, which is more distracting than stylistically innovative. It’s almost as though Yoo is afraid we’d abandon him if we were lead through eras in his life in a more straightforward way (after all, writing about life is often more enjoyable and exciting than living it).
Style will only take you so far, and one wonders what this collection would have looked like if it came out two or five years from now, had the time and space to breathe. Not quite memoir, not quite humor, it is more a selection of comic, interconnected, autobiographical essays, each self-sufficient enough (and read like they were designed for) for bookstore readings. The problem is, put side by side, we get our instant reminiscing fix, but we're overwhelmed, with the recapping of some basic stuff more thanbis necessary in order to achieve that self-contained aspect. A little creative editing and restructuring would have gone a long way. Again, though the voice is clearly at times witty and charming, it is unclear why there is the compulsion to convey experiences that are, in and of themselves, not extraordinary.
It’s understandable that Yoo doesn’t want to take on either burden of representing or analyzing his ethnic identity too much—this is about him coming to define himself as an individual generally, and as an artist specifically. That’s fine. However, there are enough references to his Korean heritage—including a notable incident where he realizes his parents have taken a kind of surrogate son under their wing—to make not touching on family dynamics in more than a broad-strokes way jarring. And in this context over ethnic anxiety, Amy Chua’s blurb is even more ambiguous.
A glance at the back cover and front matter reveals that Yoo is a moderately successful young-adult author: but there’s a strict curtain cut across any discussion of how he made that part of himself come to life, as though those accomplishments would undercut the “confessions of a chronic underachiever” subtitle. Failure is a part of life, and though we gain some insight (way too late into the book) on some reasons as to why he has become such a self-effacing person in response to the ever-present pressures to succeed, it is never altogether clear that he is a failure or even, as he maintains, a choke artist: even in what could be, at most, a kind of dysthymia, the rent gets paid, he snags a live-in girlfriend, and he is writing, despite not measuring up to, say, the anxiety-inducing success of former high-school classmates with those quaint things, full-time gigs. Where’s the beef?
It’s hard enough to get people to believe the idea of a “quarterlife crisis” –that post-college, what-do-I-do-with-myself malaise/anxiety secret sauce—is a real thing; when this very real angst is portrayed in broad, breezy, self-aware strokes, it’s even more difficult to relate. Even in humor, the characters have to take themselves seriously enough to allow us to become emotionally invested in them—a certain gravitas to bring the absurdity of circumstances into relief. But we’re consistently kept at arm’s length.
Perhaps, in the end, what’s most disappointing about The Choke Artist is the very way it leaves the reader hanging, squarely in the present moment (or close to it)—the epiphanic transformation from slacker to writer (and writer-I-secretly-always-was, natch) is rushed, and incomplete: the film is ending, but there’s no closure—which means this will certainly be optioned for today’s attention-span-limited audiences, who crave entertainment over meaning, as though art were a zero-sum game. We are just as ambivalent at the end as at the beginning—about everything: writing, love, a person’s place in the world, and matters of identity.
December 20, 2013
David Yoo's The Choke Artist tells the story of his high school years, a time when he went from a varsity jock to a wannabe thug trying to hide his Asian descent. The book is set during the late 1980s in a white-ruled town in Connecticut, where the closest thing to a black person is a Caucasian with a tan. Wanting to erase the Asian stereotype that is placed upon him and fit in the society around him, David finds his own escape and solution to his problem. He does everything to avoid being like his typical, smart sister, an interesting idea that plays out hilariously. The book essentially examines the teenage life of a high school outcast and puts us in the perspective of a minority, showing their struggles.
One of the most memorable events in this book was when David removes a mole off his face. After carefully examining each and every inch of his face, he is convinced that a single mole on his face looks "foreign", leading to his decision to cut it off, which soon regrows. He was trying to lose a part of him that will always be there, much like his Asian descent. This act demonstrates how far a person would go to avoid the looks and stares. The pressure to conform and look a specific way or act in a certain manner affects who we are and what we will become.
Ultimately, the story of David's experiences is a story of self-acceptance, confidence, and the ability to overcome any obstacle in life. It all adds up to a tale of self-worth, an example for all teens which shows us to appreciate the way we are, not the way society wants us to be. The Choke Artist tells the story very well, inspiring us to embrace our differences and push past any limitations put on us.
I found myself moved by this story; it was as if the author and I were connected somehow. I understood where he came from when he wanted to change himself and his appearance, since I shared the same isolated feeling when growing up in a city other than my hometown. It amazes me how accurately he describes being stereotyped, such as the high expectations to do well in school. His hysterically awkward and/or embarrassing stories are almost as bad as mine, if not the same.
Not only does he relate to me in his experiences, but also he is able to teach me life lessons I would have encountered in the future. David shares his thoughts and experiences, giving advice on topics such as relationships, schools, and jobs. By sharing his life, he saves us from wasting our time by making the same mistakes he did, leaving room for us to make our own mistakes and learn from them instead.
This book is the perfect choice if you’re looking for a lighthearted, uplifting story that helps you in life along the way. I recommend it especially to teens, since they can relate to the difficulties he had getting to what he is now, a clever writer. Overall, if you are looking for an interesting book that will not bore you to death, which is perfect for those who don’t read independently, then this is the book for you.
One of the most memorable events in this book was when David removes a mole off his face. After carefully examining each and every inch of his face, he is convinced that a single mole on his face looks "foreign", leading to his decision to cut it off, which soon regrows. He was trying to lose a part of him that will always be there, much like his Asian descent. This act demonstrates how far a person would go to avoid the looks and stares. The pressure to conform and look a specific way or act in a certain manner affects who we are and what we will become.
Ultimately, the story of David's experiences is a story of self-acceptance, confidence, and the ability to overcome any obstacle in life. It all adds up to a tale of self-worth, an example for all teens which shows us to appreciate the way we are, not the way society wants us to be. The Choke Artist tells the story very well, inspiring us to embrace our differences and push past any limitations put on us.
I found myself moved by this story; it was as if the author and I were connected somehow. I understood where he came from when he wanted to change himself and his appearance, since I shared the same isolated feeling when growing up in a city other than my hometown. It amazes me how accurately he describes being stereotyped, such as the high expectations to do well in school. His hysterically awkward and/or embarrassing stories are almost as bad as mine, if not the same.
Not only does he relate to me in his experiences, but also he is able to teach me life lessons I would have encountered in the future. David shares his thoughts and experiences, giving advice on topics such as relationships, schools, and jobs. By sharing his life, he saves us from wasting our time by making the same mistakes he did, leaving room for us to make our own mistakes and learn from them instead.
This book is the perfect choice if you’re looking for a lighthearted, uplifting story that helps you in life along the way. I recommend it especially to teens, since they can relate to the difficulties he had getting to what he is now, a clever writer. Overall, if you are looking for an interesting book that will not bore you to death, which is perfect for those who don’t read independently, then this is the book for you.
July 18, 2012
pretty good book, I started to hate it half way through and completely enjoyed myself in the last 60 pages. worth the read if you get the chance to make it through the first half and don't mind the mishmash of styles that are fun if sometimes a little like walking on squishy grapes.
I think I was over critical in the first half of the book due to the references to YA books on the cover but if you make it to the end and can see the whole thing together (slaughter house five) it makes a particular kind of sense and a feel that I think some of us grew up with and have trouble formulating into coherent thought lines.
I think I was over critical in the first half of the book due to the references to YA books on the cover but if you make it to the end and can see the whole thing together (slaughter house five) it makes a particular kind of sense and a feel that I think some of us grew up with and have trouble formulating into coherent thought lines.
September 27, 2012
Very funny and still very poignant. David Yoo's skillful writing took this 50-year-old woman and had her feeling like she was inhabiting the body of a teenage Korean American boy. No small feat! Highly recommend!
October 20, 2012
I picked this up after hearing David's interview on NPR. This is the first book I've read in its entirety since I graduated from college in 1999 and I gotta admit, very enjoyable read. Easy and light writing style covering dark topics of male adolescence.
August 8, 2012
hilarious and a little painful to read, as it mirrors a little too accurately some of my own experience.
September 17, 2018
Good look into the mind of a teenage boy but I could have used a little less self-loathing and a little more wisdom gained.
August 20, 2024
One of the funniest (and most relatable) books I've read in a long time!
September 13, 2015
I enjoyed this book! Mostly because I can kind of relate. :O
First, you are introduced to Dave as an awkward child growing up as a Korean boy in an American community. I never thought that being Asian would lead to so much marginalisation. I mean we've seen a lot of movies and some other books, but nothing really chronicles it as such.
Dave shares his stories growing up- from his room mate in a dorm, body building, being insecure, his sex life, graduation and his temp jobs so that he can be a writer at night. The whole book is rather amusing and funny, though at times depressing because you can't help but feel sad for what Dave does to stem his insecurity etc. Wish he'll love himself more, be more confident etc.
But anyways:
The last quarter of the book, which talks about his temping and his pursuit of writing was probably the one that really resonated with me. Was first smiling to myself at some jokes in the book, and then I also teared later on. SOBS
For my reference next time:
"Could it be that I'd been stalling out on my writing because I was unintentionally blocking myself from writing candidly about myself? In which case, was I considering quitting writing without ever having truly given it an honest shot? Could I really quit temping and writing and become a company man, get married and have 2.5 kids and a house with a picket fence? Wouldn't that just be another example of me sabotaging things yet again?....Never trying my hardest at anything and constantly ruining anything remotely promising I had going by quitting or intentionally failing prematurely before I inevitably screw up honestly."
"The very thing I'd liked about temping all these years- that I didn't really do anything substantial and thereby preserved my mental energy to address my creative side at night- was simultaneously the bane of my existence.. ........What a joke. And I was left with facing the question I'd done an impressive job of ignoring completely all this time, but which now seemed pressing: at which point does chasing your dreams go from admirable to downright foolish? It always shocked me ow my belief in the lifestyle I'd chosen could dissovle so abruptly."
"So are you going to live your life on hold?"
First, you are introduced to Dave as an awkward child growing up as a Korean boy in an American community. I never thought that being Asian would lead to so much marginalisation. I mean we've seen a lot of movies and some other books, but nothing really chronicles it as such.
Dave shares his stories growing up- from his room mate in a dorm, body building, being insecure, his sex life, graduation and his temp jobs so that he can be a writer at night. The whole book is rather amusing and funny, though at times depressing because you can't help but feel sad for what Dave does to stem his insecurity etc. Wish he'll love himself more, be more confident etc.
But anyways:
The last quarter of the book, which talks about his temping and his pursuit of writing was probably the one that really resonated with me. Was first smiling to myself at some jokes in the book, and then I also teared later on. SOBS
For my reference next time:
"Could it be that I'd been stalling out on my writing because I was unintentionally blocking myself from writing candidly about myself? In which case, was I considering quitting writing without ever having truly given it an honest shot? Could I really quit temping and writing and become a company man, get married and have 2.5 kids and a house with a picket fence? Wouldn't that just be another example of me sabotaging things yet again?....Never trying my hardest at anything and constantly ruining anything remotely promising I had going by quitting or intentionally failing prematurely before I inevitably screw up honestly."
"The very thing I'd liked about temping all these years- that I didn't really do anything substantial and thereby preserved my mental energy to address my creative side at night- was simultaneously the bane of my existence.. ........What a joke. And I was left with facing the question I'd done an impressive job of ignoring completely all this time, but which now seemed pressing: at which point does chasing your dreams go from admirable to downright foolish? It always shocked me ow my belief in the lifestyle I'd chosen could dissovle so abruptly."
"So are you going to live your life on hold?"
March 3, 2013
This is a memoir from author David Yoo, about his experiences growing up as a Korean-American in suburban Connecticut.
I did not find the first half very appealing, as it was mainly centered on the author's failures to have sex with a bunch of people from high school through his college years, but it picked up in part two. The second part focused on David's dream of becoming an author as well as on the places where he worked. It's filled with many different experiences, as he worked for a temping agency. There are a lot of colorful anecdotes and I laughed my way through this part.
My particular favorite was when he was caught stealing from a marketing firm as he was saying his last goodbye. On page 131 Yoo sums up his feelings of leaving this job by saying that frustrating things are going to happen in life; at least make yourself deserve them.
I found the last bit to be a bit of a sad commentary on our society. Growing up in a predominantly white part of Rhode Island, I feel I can identify with David and his sister. I consider myself to be Middle Eastern. (I am half Lebanese and a quarter Armenian....The other part is Italian.) I was often the butt of jokes and left out during my school years, but I think I came out relatively unscathed (if you don't count my unyielding paranoia) as compared to David's sister. The scenes revolving around her bedroom made me cry and think about how many other kids feel this way every single day, only because of the pain and torment someone else causes them. It was very strong and I loved the part about the Brick Children-- A moving metaphor.
I did not find the first half very appealing, as it was mainly centered on the author's failures to have sex with a bunch of people from high school through his college years, but it picked up in part two. The second part focused on David's dream of becoming an author as well as on the places where he worked. It's filled with many different experiences, as he worked for a temping agency. There are a lot of colorful anecdotes and I laughed my way through this part.
My particular favorite was when he was caught stealing from a marketing firm as he was saying his last goodbye. On page 131 Yoo sums up his feelings of leaving this job by saying that frustrating things are going to happen in life; at least make yourself deserve them.
I found the last bit to be a bit of a sad commentary on our society. Growing up in a predominantly white part of Rhode Island, I feel I can identify with David and his sister. I consider myself to be Middle Eastern. (I am half Lebanese and a quarter Armenian....The other part is Italian.) I was often the butt of jokes and left out during my school years, but I think I came out relatively unscathed (if you don't count my unyielding paranoia) as compared to David's sister. The scenes revolving around her bedroom made me cry and think about how many other kids feel this way every single day, only because of the pain and torment someone else causes them. It was very strong and I loved the part about the Brick Children-- A moving metaphor.
February 26, 2015
This was hilarious and depressing. A look into a life that was completely alien to me. Kind of embarrassing to say that I'm 44 and I really only have ever had three or four Asian friends and two or three of those were coworkers. It's not like I was pre-screening or anything but it just seemed to work out that way. So I had no idea of the struggles of Asian Americans growing up surrounded by white people. It's funny that the author talks about trying to distance himself from the Asian stereotypes because I've definitely met a couple of Asians whom I thought acted completely outrageous and I assumed it was so they would appear more "American". Because let's face it, Americans are pretty outrageous.
Anyway, there are many laugh out loud and cringe-worthy moments and even a couple really sad moments. Toward the end it started getting pretty depressing as the author/protagonist got older and older and his life wasn't going anywhere. The ending was fairly uplifting though so that helped.
Anyway, there are many laugh out loud and cringe-worthy moments and even a couple really sad moments. Toward the end it started getting pretty depressing as the author/protagonist got older and older and his life wasn't going anywhere. The ending was fairly uplifting though so that helped.
June 10, 2013
This book further develops the idea that there is a reason behind everything that happens. David Yoo is able to break down the stereotypical wall of the overachieving Asian American and strives to prove to the world that he the polar opposite.
I loved the way he describes his life, from the details of his failed intercourse encounters to the feelings of being replaced by someone else as his father's son. Although the time lapses and jumps feel a bit disorganized and random, I think they tie the story together really well. It also reflects the panicking personality he describes.
It was quite surprising to read that because of the traumatic experience of seeing his sister cut herself, he became determined to avoid everything that made her do such a thing.
I loved the way he describes his life, from the details of his failed intercourse encounters to the feelings of being replaced by someone else as his father's son. Although the time lapses and jumps feel a bit disorganized and random, I think they tie the story together really well. It also reflects the panicking personality he describes.
It was quite surprising to read that because of the traumatic experience of seeing his sister cut herself, he became determined to avoid everything that made her do such a thing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2014
Tremendously enjoyed this book. The powerful combination of pain and suffering with hard honesty and humor make it a fascinating read, one which reminded me of some of Bukowski's best (autobiographical) fiction. I admire Yoo for having the balls to share and write about deep, deep personal secrets, and his book shows how terribly difficult it can be to be human: the hard choices life can present us, the pressures parents and society place on us, the challenges of multiculturalism, the seemingly inexplicable forces at work that sometimes make it seem as though some being is deliberately tormenting us. And Yoo presents these serious themes (and others) with such humor that I must admit I laughed myself silly too many times to count.
December 16, 2016
It was a fun read. Humourous, made me a laugh.
July 9, 2014
I admit, I only got 81 pages into this book before giving up on it. Taken individually, Yoo's chapters are howlingly funny, but the way he keeps circling back around the same high school and college years to hash over the same issues (getting big and getting laid) just didn't work for me. If I find myself finding other things to do at times in the day when I'm usually reading, it's time to move on. I would recommend it to some readers, but it wasn't the right match for me.
February 2, 2013
Halfway through and can't put it down. David Yoo's book rocks. More to come. I have this book in print with a lovely autograph from David. I can't finish the book until November because of my eyesight. I can only see well enough to read ebooks right now. I look forward to November so I can get new glasses and finish David's wonderful book.
August 6, 2012
This set of essays is often funny but also often uncomfortable. Between the author's insistence that he is a bad person & his lack of self confidence, I got a view into a mindset that is totally foreign to my own. Add in a few just funny moments and it's well worth a read, even if it isn't groundbreaking.
July 13, 2012
I needed more funny in my life, and this fit the bill. I laughed out loud on the subway, it's that funny. I also found out many things I never knew about teenage boys, mostly shocking and a little horrifying but also hysterical.
August 7, 2012
OMG! I loved this book! The author is hilarious and I totally feel for him. Couldn't put the book down once I started! Highly recommend!
Want to read
December 9, 2012NPR recommendation
September 21, 2014
This book was brutally honest; both funny and sad at the same time. Entertaining memoir.
September 1, 2015
It's a funny book, but in between some chapters I got so mad at him for being lazy!!!
February 10, 2016
Enjoyable and funny, at times poignant, but loses steam in the second half before picking back up a little bit near the end.
December 27, 2012
Very funny you cannot stop reading. But at the same time very courageous book.
April 3, 2017
If a book can make me laugh out loud several times and challenge some assumptions along the way--it is a good read for me. The backcover blurbs called it right--this is a funny and cringeworthy book. He is brutally honest regarding his own flaws including his obsession with his body image and the challenges of his personal relationships with girls, family, and friends. He can make a mundane or awkward moment into a great comic bit, but this is not an entirely superficial account. His writing also reveals how our self-perceptions and fears of how others perceive us can be true stumbling blocks in life.
I had not heard of Yoo before reading this book, but I will be looking out for his next novels.
I had not heard of Yoo before reading this book, but I will be looking out for his next novels.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews