A Visit from the Goon Squad

In this week's Road Trip Wednesday post, I talked about sensory description and writing the five senses. When considering one sense in particular for that post--hearing/sound--I kept thinking of A Visit from the Goon Squad. If I was going to list everything wonderful about that book, I could fill an entire blog. It won a gazillion awards (Pulitzer, anyone?) and it seemed like you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a book reviewed who loved loved LOVED it.* It met all of my personal expectations, and exceeded them. Dear Reader, it contained a chapter told in extremely funny and poignant PowerPoint slides. PowerPoint! That. Is. Genius. At. Work.

Oh right--senses and hearing. Music accompanies every page of the book, in obvious (e.g. many of the characters work in the music industry) and subtle ways. Normally reading descriptions of music or other people listening to music doesn't do much for me,** but they were written so extremely well in Goon Squad that I loved reading them. To give you a taste: "Then the sisters began to sing. Oh, the raw, almost threadbare sound of their voices mixed with the clash of instruments--these sensations met with a faculty deeper in Bennie than judgment or even pleasure; they communed directly with his body, whose shivering, bursting reply made him dizzy." 

PS If you've read the book, check out the charts depicting the timeline of chapters and relationships of characters here. Now I want to reread the chapters in chronological order. 

*I have no idea where that idiom came from, but I use it all the time. Disclaimer: I love cats and hope nobody actually swings them. 

**Unlike reading about art and aesthetics. Or film reviews. I love reading all of that. It's a mystery!

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