Status Updates From Egg & Spoon

TORNADOES HAPPEN OUTSIDE OF THE USA, FFS. Russia is the LARGEST country in the world. It has many tornadoes!!!

This is the most 'Murican-centric book I've read, and it's supposed to be about Russia. It's a piss off.

(The USA gets the worst tornadoes, perhaps. I will credit them that. Love Ryan Hall Y'All, Brad Arnold, etc. But this lack of worldliness on behalf of Maguire is absolutely GRATING. Rage-reading it.)

Urgh. No. Just... no. It's a story for American theatre-going masses who like something predictable and comfortable and full of reassuringly accessible pop-cultural references. The humour is for the sort of people who think Friends was and remains a better sitcom than Seinfeld. I have a serious hate on for this book. Thus far refusing to DNF (did I hate Gormenghast more? I'm starting to wonder.)

Torturous. Determined not to DNF, but not even halfway through. I've stopped caring what happens, though would like to see the Firebird again, just in case that has some value.
Terrible, otherwise.
Did you know that at the White House, their Egg & Spoon race is just rolling an egg down a hill with a spoon?! I didn't need to know that either. What happened? Some spoiled kid dropped theirs, so they changed the rules?!

Argh.
If this gets a high rating, it'll be from an American (same issue with "A Place to Hang the Moon" by Kate whatshername).
From a perspective outside of the U.S., this book makes little sense. Baba Yaga eats Cheerios and reads The Far Side.
We could be drawing on Russian and Eastern European culture, past and present, over millenia, but no - The United States, ca. 1990.
Stupid.

I think... I think I might hate this book. The Princess Bride it is not, but this guy certainly tries to be as funny. I can tell he writes things that get further adapted into broadway plays. Urgh.
As soon as Baba Yaga mentioned Kool-Aid and being cancelled, I knew this book was going to be a slog, or possibly a DNF.
I do not DNF lightly.

Meh - when do we meet Baba Yaga?!

Cute so far, aside from it being bleak and Russian peasantry-centric.