Not my style, I'm afraid. Mentions Maths. I'm going to hide far away now. ( )

Free on Kindle. This was funny and sweet, mostly.

I was intrigued by this book from the first time I'd heard of it. It sounded as if it would be an interesting read to say the least. It was interesting, but it was also weird. I've read this twice now because I felt like I'd lost something along the way. And while the second reading did help me figure it out a little more I was still kind of confused with the whole thing.

Gomez was an odd character. His downstairs neighbor was odd, the employee that worked for him at the antiques store was odd, the guy that was shopping at the store was odd. His doctor/girlfriend was the most "normal" person in the book, and even she was a bit odd at times.

The things that happen in Gomez's life aren't really all that odd, but the way in which he deals with them is odd. Falling in love with the researcher, perfectly normal. Becoming her stalker stalker, odd... I can't really give anymore examples without giving some of the story away.

The writing was humorous, I laughed quite a few times throughout the book. And like I said the things that happened to Gomez weren't all that abnormal, but the way he deals with life was a bit strange. It was an entertaining read, and it didn't take me long to read it. I actually read it twice within a few days. ( )

2.5
I was hooked by the tagline "Boy Meets Girl. Boy Stalks Girl. Girl already has a stalker. Boy becomes her stalker-stalker." It's kinda perfect, and twisted enough to be right up my alley. (I assumed.) And though I did like this aspect of the story, I felt a little let down.

It's weird; I like the elements of the story, and they all seem to fit together to make something I should really like, but I felt disconnected from the story. I think this is in large part due to the "medical blog" style. I mean, yes, it was quirky and sometimes very amusing, more so when you would take into account the things Gomez was saying + the reasons he was saying them + the fact that a medical research team was to have full access to the blog and his (very personal) shared thoughts. This should have = a win, and occasionally it did. But most of the time, Gomez's clinical style and my questions on the timing and delivery of it all kept me from buying in and going with it.

But despite this, I wouldn't call it a bad read. Parke is funny and quirky ala Christopher Moore, and some of the stuff that happens is fun and random in that good, wtf? way. Gomez's interactions with his clueless neighbor were so hilariously uncomfortable (in fact, Gomez's interactions with a lot of people were hilariously uncomfortable -- he knows some odd people, and is a bit odd himself...), and the situations he finds himself are fun/zany. I think there will be people who will really love this book and recommend it to people, and think about it and its characters fondly. I'm just somewhere in the middle, wanting to like it more than I did, wanting to connect to it more than I could. I think with a few different choices, the book would have had me, but as it is, it fell just shy. ( )

The title character reminded me a lot of Ignatius J. Reilly. The book itself felt to me like I was reading about Ignatius hitting the dating circuit hard. I think I may have liked this more than Confederacy of Dunces, but it's been a while since I've read the latter, so it's hard to say with certainty.

There were a few things this book could have done without - actually just one: blog entry. The narrative moved along through the efforts of the title character's blogging. That's fine, but once it's established as the mechanism, I didn't feel it was necessary to include "blog entry" at the beginning of every couple of paragraphs. It became very Pavlovian to me. I began to wince a little every time I hit those dreaded words. Fortunately, it became less grating rather than more as I read on and about halfway through the book I think I managed to somehow block it out almost entirely. Gomez himself, at first, I felt he was breaking character here and there, but after further consideration, I thought he was just neurotic enough that it could have made sense...and it became funnier.

Overall, I think just like Confederacy, there will be people that love this and others who hate it. I don't believe it was as much a showcase of literary talent as CoD, but I think there is a bit of talent and I would be willing to pick up future works from this writer. ( )