- Paperback: 128 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; New title edition (1 Feb 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679734406
- ISBN-13: 978-0679734406
- Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 0.8 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,945,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In his second novel, Baker turns a young father's feeding-time reverie into a catalog of the minutiae of domestic love.
About the Author
Nicholson Baker was born in New York in 1957. He is the author of eight novels, including The Mezzanine, Vox and Room Temperature (all Granta Books), and five non-fiction works, including U & I (also Granta) and Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, for which he won the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
I WAS IN THE ROCKING CHAIR giving our six-month-old Bug her late afternoon bottle. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I WAS IN THE ROCKING CHAIR giving our six-month-old Bug her late afternoon bottle. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Nicholson Baker has made a career of writing about small moments in intense detail. This slim book covers his musings whilst giving his 6 month old daughter a bottle of milk.
Baker has moments of real perceptiveness, which made you glad you picked up his book, but in-between those moments are chunks of writing which are as dull distractedly feeding a baby can be. In some senses that makes you appreciate the insights more when they come.
He writes like no-one else out there and he writes well. This book does not feel like fiction, it feels very much real and honest. However, in the end, this is not a great book.
Baker has moments of real perceptiveness, which made you glad you picked up his book, but in-between those moments are chunks of writing which are as dull distractedly feeding a baby can be. In some senses that makes you appreciate the insights more when they come.
He writes like no-one else out there and he writes well. This book does not feel like fiction, it feels very much real and honest. However, in the end, this is not a great book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Tender, engrossing
29 Oct 1997
Format:Paperback
Probably the most undeservedly overlooked of Nicholson Baker's novels, Room Temperature is a delightful, heartwarming tome.
Any attempt at synopsis would only serve to make the book sound dreadfully boring. After all, during the entire 116 pages the narrator is feeding his small child. No car chases or steamy love scenes. Just a father feeding his baby.
Rather than relying on typical, often stale plot devices, Baker relies on his considerable talent at description to maintain the reader's interest, and he succeeds in a big way. Room Temperature is touching in a way that none of his other books are. The father-child bond is explored in such breathtaking detail that one finds the book impossible to put down, despite the lack of a discernable plot.
Nicholson Baker is not for everyone. His quirky prose and lack of traditional plot lines are sure to put off many readers, but fans of Updike are sure to find a great read in Room Temperature
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
praise for attention to details in "whatever" world
11 Nov 1999
Format:Paperback
I have read all of Mr.Bakers books, and with the exception of "The Everlasting Story..." (which indeed did seem to be everlasting) have read them with delight. Although he's often compared to Updike, I think he surpasses him due to his wit and his more creative sense of the strangeness of life. In "Room Temperature" we find the antidote, along with his other novels, to a modern world obsessed with speed, impersonal technology and the summational catchphrase "whatever". How wonderful it is to see an author bend his mind and spirit to the details of life with so much talent and fervor. And how wonderful to see that his books, plotless and demanding of full attention as they are, sell so well. It gives me hope for our civilization; it really does. On a sidenote - I am tired of critics and readers thinking he is cheapening his prose by writing on sexual topics. Sex is one of the most universal and fascinating and character-revealing subjects around; a great writer can make anything cerebral and holy, and a writer needs to go where his passions lie. Besides, do we really want every novel to be about rubber bands and bathroom hot air dryers?
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
How far does your mind wander in 20 blissful minutes?
8 Nov 2010
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
A quiet meditation on the life of a brand new father, and how the infant a couple brings into the world somehow encapsulates every memory, every thought, every ounce of love of the husband for the wife. The sound of bacon crackling = the sound of the narrator's wife smiling in bed. How happy would we all be if our moments in thought were spent deeply ruminating over the magical details that make living worthwhile? Why shouldn't feeding your infant from a bottle in a rocking chair be at once everything and nothing?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
