The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber

Lumber!: This is a brilliant book. It consists of several short essays on varied subjects; fingernail clippers, a review of a slang dictionary, and the demise of card catalogues to name a few, and one long essay on the history and usage of the word 'lumber'.

Nicholson is a master of finding the sublime in the mundane and his essays bring into focus the understated beauty of everyday objects. Eccentric and and at times almost comically over-erudite? Sure, but you'll find yourself nodding in silent recognition at his apt descriptions of the minutiae of daily life.

I've read and enjoyed other works by Baker (The Fermata, Vox), but this collection of magazine articles is absolute rubbish. Random musings on arcane topics such as fingernail clippers, cinema projectors and model airplanes not only fail to entertain, they appear to have no redeeming value whatsoever.

Baker is without question a talented writer, but this collection aptly demonstrates that even the best author needs adequate subject matter with which to work. I'm stunned at just how bad this collection actually is. The first time I've ever awarded a one star rating.

Nicholson Baker is one of the most interesting writers alive. This collection of essays is both serious and very funny. At times, I was chuckling out loud, at other times astonished by his attention to detail and his perspective on those details he cherishes. The extended piece "Lumber" had my amazed and amused throughout.

Some very good pieces, and some that are merely fodder. The best is "Discards": what happened to the provenance history and other data on library cataloge cards when university libraries switched to online database systems in the 1990s - a must read for the lover of books formerly owned by famous people. "The History of Punctuation" comes in second for being informative, followed by "Books as Furniture" for being witty. "Lumber," which the author calls "the printed products from the lumber-room" – the mind, I found to be an interesting read, all seven pieces of it, and on a variety of subject matter. But I wasn't impressed with the remainder of the book, about the size of the author's thoughts, much less the other topics he was show more writing about. show less

I looked at every essay, read a couple, but really found nothing to want me to delve any deeper into the fellow. This guy is just not interesting to me. I do not like his personality at all, which is, for the most part, missing from the beginning of this book and quick to get a little too full of itself to the degree I was finding myself becoming nauseated beyond repair. I have since read a couple Raymond Carver short stories in order to get back to something real, something with gusto and flair.

Picked up on the recommendation of BoingBoing, read a few essays, decided I wasn't a huge fan. He can get a little nasty about other people, which is an automatic turn-off for me.