 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today I'm going to try and puzzle out what I liked so much about the gold finch. So this one I read over the course of about two months. I basically spent most of the summer reading it. I started off reading anywhere from 10 to 15 pages at a time. As soon as I opened up the book and started reading, I knew it was going to be something that I was going to need to read slowly. And the whole reason I picked it up to begin with was because the movie is coming out and has some of my favorite actors in it. So I picked up the book, started reading, going very, very slowly through it, and then at some point everything changed. I went from 10 to 15 pages a day to 30 to 50 pages a day, and then finally the last 100 pages in probably about 12 hours. I was so... I'd fallen in love with the book, but I think the ending of the book is the strongest part for me because everything... It's not that... I don't want to say that everything is wrapped up, but it's not one of those experiences where you have the full circle kind of thing. But it does bring everything from me to an immensely satisfying conclusion. Now, I don't know how much of a spoiler this is, but this book is not really about the gold finch. This book is about the main character Theo Decker. He loses his mother the very beginning of the book. He loses his mother in a terrorist attack, and somebody bombs the... I think it's a museum that they bomb. I can't remember which museum it is. It doesn't really matter. But they bomb the museum and he ends up in possession of a painting. I knew all that going in, and I was wondering how in the world is it just this kid on the run from people trying to keep this picture away from them? Or what is it? I don't know. What was his purpose for stealing the painting? All these questions I had going into it, and none of the questions really piqued my interest. None of the questions that I had about the book, and it wasn't until I saw the trailer for the movie that I was like, I need to go ahead and read this. I believe it comes out what September? I can't remember. But I'm super hyped for it now, especially since I've seen the trailers, and the trailers were pitch perfect. Not only are the scenes in there from the actual book, every single scene I recognize. So that gives me hope for it. But also just the tone and the cinematography and even the color correction. Just everything about the trailer speaks to me as a lover of the book. But none of those questions that I was asking myself about this book interest me. But when I finally got into it, when I finally came across a certain character, that's when everything changed. And I realized that this story at its heart is a story, is a coming of age story. It isn't until Boris shows up. And that's about the closest thing to a spoiler I'm going to get at this point. Everything else I've talked about is mentioned in the description of the book. And I don't consider those things spoilers. Besides, if you're looking for a spoiler free review, I honestly don't suggest you watch any videos. If you're worried about spoilers for this book, there's some really great stuff that happens. I wouldn't say that they are twists and turns, but there are some really great scenes in this book that I wouldn't suggest you let anybody spoil for you. So definitely just click away and just go read the book. Now, when Boris arrives, I automatically fell in love with Boris. If you're following my progress on Goodreads or if you want to go read my one sentence review for this book because I haven't yet wrapped my head around everything that I love and that's what I like to do with my written reviews is I like to go in depth and dissect my experience. So that's going to take me a while to do. But the YouTube channel is more of a conversational piece. You know, we're going to sit here and we're going to talk about the book. I'm also not going to be doing a spoiler section at the end of this review. So if you're waiting around for that, it's not coming. I don't want to talk about any of the major details in this video. I might do a spoiler discussion video like I do with my Stephen King books because I love this so much. I want them to be two separate entities. I want you guys to be able to know my thoughts on the book without spoilers and then a full fledged spoiler review where we just sit and we just dissect the whole book. That'd be a lot of fun. Now, I'm not even going to ask if you guys want it because I will probably just end up doing it anyways. So once Boris comes on to the stage, the entire tone of the book changed for me. Now, I don't think the tone of the book changed. It's not dryly written. It is, I feel, one of the more accessible Pulitzer Prize-winning novels that I have read. I haven't read many. Mostly I lean toward the Man Booker Prize. Those cats, I read those books. I don't review them because I don't feel qualified to review them. It would literally be a reviewer who just said, I like it, I don't like it because a lot of those books have really deep threads in them that I either don't fully understand and I don't like feeling stupid. Nobody likes feeling stupid. So those reviews would be boring, I feel. With this one, I didn't feel that there was too much subtext and if there was a lot of subtext, I caught it. Like maybe where the themes and the elements, how the painting is like the boy, that kind of thing. That's one thing that I looked at and I appreciated. But at the end of the day, all of that stuff aside, it is a really emotionally poignant and rewarding experience from the first page all the way to the last page. Mind you, there are segments where my favorite characters weren't on screen that I did find myself less adamant about moving forward. I always wanted to pick it up to find out whether or not those characters were coming back. But there are points when you tend to worry that this person has gone away forever. But that's one of the best parts of the book for me was either racing to get to the point where I knew that character would return or slowing down and having that moment with the character of absence and enjoying, not enjoying, but feeling that absence, feeling the same emotions that that character was feeling. I really enjoyed that. If nothing else, Donatart really gets you into the mind of the main character. It's also written in first person, so you're in the head of Theo Decker. It's not one of those confusing experiences where the narrator is supposing what other people are doing out in the world. It is hyper focused on this character. It is a very close first person experience. And then we're going to get to the point that I actually had a problem with the book, but it's not really a problem. The problem with the book is I was without a shadow of a doubt. I'm not using this word ironically at all. I was triggered. There's dealings with drug addiction and mostly it's not really the addiction or the using of the drugs, even though she nailed that aspect of it. But there is a section of withdrawal and recovery and that whole scene I had to put down the book for about a week. I didn't even look at it. I put it away. I didn't want to think about it because my skin was actually crawling. If you come across this review and you don't know me, I was a heroin addict from 1997 to 2001. My wife saved my life. I met her and she gave me a reason to live and then we had two beautiful kids over the years. They are now seven years old and 14 years old and every single, it's like every seven years. I kind of renewed reasoning for being here because we were together seven years before the first one came and then the second one came and another seven years later. It's odd. It's that seven year thing. Seven year itch, whatever. She came along and I fell in love with her. She gave me a reason to exist beyond the drugs and it wasn't a matter of her giving me an ultimatum. It was a matter of me saying I love her so much I want to be around to experience her. I want to be around to live life with her so I got to get off the jump because before that I was just bound set and determined to murder myself with my drug. At least I'd be going out happy kind of deal. There's a lot of discussion in this book about the black abyss during recovery. Many people don't deal with the depression and the nihilism that comes with recovery. It's probably about for the first week and we're up to a month while you're detoxing. You enter this stage where you lose all faith in everything. It's like nothing means anything. It's the deepest blackest depression you can possibly think. And on top of all that, on top of that deep, dark, black pit of depression you have the physical problems with it also. You're sweating, your skin's crawling, you're burning up, you're shaking, you're shivering, your teeth are chattering. If you got them left in your head by that point in time. All these terrible things are going on to you, but you put yourself there. And that's one thing that Donatart got right with this book and something that I was missing from The Little Friend. If you don't know, I read The Little Friend and I absolutely hated it. I almost gave it one star but it is terrifically written. So I gave it two stars on Goodreads but then I ended up deleting my review because I think I was a little harsh because I was also going through some crap during that point in my life and I reread it before I give a final judgment again. Well, with this one, I never once doubted the author. I never once thought, okay, we might not get any kind of emotional reward here. It might just be a very, very dark experience to the point where you want to stick a gun in your mouth at the end of the book kind of deal. It wasn't that. I was very surprised with how the book ended not because there's a twist ending but because I didn't expect it and I didn't expect any point of this book to happen. I honestly thought that this was going to be one of those things where he gets the painting and it fast-forwards to his adult life. I don't know why I thought that but the best part about this book is him existing right directly after the bomb and losing his mother. Again, that's in the description. That's one of the best parts of the book as far as the storyline is concerned because it kept me just interested enough before I got to Boris. I wasn't bored but I was wondering where in the world is this going because we haven't jumped ahead to the saying and then all of a sudden I hit that point and I was like, this is a Coming of Age novel and it is probably the best Coming of Age novel I've ever read. The reason for that is wholly biased. The reason for that is because much of the stuff, the troubles and everything that Theo gets into mirrored my life as a kid. I had one really close friend and we got into all different kinds of shit and yes, even some of the sexual stuff, all the stuff that came about in Theo's life, all that stuff has happened to me at some point. If you read the book, you can figure that stuff out for yourself but it was such a beautiful experience to relive my life vicariously. Is that right? Is that the word? Vicariously? Anyways, through Theo. Relive the happier times and unfortunately much of the happiness when I was younger dealt with alcohol and then my later teenage years was heroin. I never did anything else. In fact, I didn't even try weed until just recently, about five years ago. But all these things that Boris and Theo get into and all the drama they get into there's scenes like that in my life and it was a beautiful experience for me and I would love if more of my friends were to read this. You may not have the same experience that I do but this is one of those stories that if you want a little peek into my life you'd be able to read at least the first half of this book and see where I'm coming from as a human being. I think that's interesting. Now, this book will end up on my top 20. I have no idea where it's going to go because some of the things that I have mentioned loving so much, the coming of age aspect, the writing, all that stuff I have other books that might beat it out in those categories. If you want to watch my series of my top 20 books of all time I will leave links to all those down there in the doobly-doo. But the final word, the final thing I want to discuss here is I've never experienced a book so deeply. I've cried. I've laughed. I've journeyed. I've read Stephen King's It going on now. I just restarted the book again on my 18th time. Yes, I read two to four pages a night. Sometimes as many as 30. It all depends on which chapter I am. I always blow through Stanley's chapter if you know what I'm talking about. But I honestly question whether or not this book is better than It in my head. And it's the first time ever that the top spot, my number one spot for a best book of all time has been questioned since it has been truly questioned. This one time after I read Nosferatu the first time I put it above It. I saw the error of my ways probably a week later. I was like, no, definitely not. I started rereading It all over again and I was like, yeah, no. It deserves to be in the top three, but it's not even close. But I do feel that this book might be better than It. And that is a bold statement coming from me. So while this is more of a review of my life than it is a review of the book, these are my opinions. This is how I feel about the book and that's all anybody's subjective review can be. You can hear with your thoughts about it down below whether they be good or bad, but please don't just say the book shocked because then I'm just going to ignore the comment. I want to talk to you about what you didn't like and why you didn't like it, but I'm pretty sure most of the people who say they didn't like it are going to be saying the book is wordy. Yeah, the book is wordy. It's a book. That's what books do. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review.