TLC Book Tours: Very Recent History by Choire Sicha

Title: Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City
Author: Choire Sicha
Format: ARC
Publisher: Harper
Publish Date: August 6, 2013
Source: TLC Book Tours

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You like really creative writing.
• You're a non-fiction fan.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "In one of the greatest cities in the world, the richest man in town is the Mayor. Billionaires shed apartments like last season's fashion trends, even as the country's economy turns inside out and workers are expelled from the City's glass towers. The young and careless go on as they always have, getting laid and getting laid off, falling in and falling out of love, and trying to navigate the strange world they traffic in: the Internet, complex financial markets, credit cards, pop stars, microplane cheese graters, and sex apps.

A true-life fable of money, sex, and politics, Very Recent History follows a man named John and his circle of friends, lovers, and enemies. It is a book that pieces together our every day, as if it were already forgotten."

My Two Cents:

"Very Recent History" is an interesting take on events that didn't happen all that long ago. Drawing on a lot of interviews, author Choire Sicha creates a non-fiction story that feels like a fictional story. This book definitely felt surreal to me in a lot of ways. It focuses on several gay men and their living in NYC as well as their relationships and it also focuses on what life was like not so long ago (as Sicha points out, a lot of things have changed in that relatively short time).

It's a surreal portrait of New York City during the 2009-? financial crisis. I vividly remember 2009 and it was surreal to read about it as if it were historical fiction. Sicha makes this book feel like almost an anthropological journey. Even though most of us know what 2009 was like, Sicha turns it on its head and we are almost on the outside looking in. It was a really interesting. It almost throws you a little off kilter.

This book was definitely interesting book. At certain points, the writing is really beautiful. Sicha said a couple things in the book that really made me think. There were other parts that sort of were slow and made me lose focus. Unfortunately, this is where the book fell flat for me.