Reddit reviews Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

It's not a book. This is an excerpt from a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College. If you like this, you should definitely check out the full speech or check out one of his three collection of essays. He's also got a number of short story collections, including a particularly famous work Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. He's probably most famous for Infinite Jest, a novel well over a thousand pages in length.

Consider the Lobster, by DFW, which I'd even say I prefer to his novels.

It's a great collection, but it doesn't include my two favorite non-fiction works by DFW: his post-9/11 reflections in Rolling Stone, and his vicious tale of a less-than-bourgeois cruise.

I just restarted it and am about 200 pages in right now. I started it a couple months ago and felt very bored with it, so I quit. Then I checked out "Consider the Lobster" from the library, and that really helped me get used to Wallace's overpopulated writing style. Then I read "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself", which is a five-day-long interview of DFW conducted by David Lipsky for Rolling Stone about "Infinite Jest" (among other things). Now I feel like not reading this book would be doing his memory a disservice. Seems like DFW was a true pioneer, his talent never really appreciated until his time had long passed.

This noir anthology kept me entertained while I was bedbound with a broken leg.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace. Very fun to read, funny, insightful. He was pretty great.

This book is creeeepy but fascinating.

Also, try r/books. It's what they're about over there, after all.

Some good nonfiction: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt