The start of the book was excellent, with all the "how to read this book" stuff and so on. The actual start of the book was sluggish, spending too much time on his parents' death, which was of no interest to me at all, at least the way he portrayed it. The middle of the book was quite good, as he told stories of how he and his little brother got by on their own, but then it got sluggish again in the end as he preoccupied himself once more with his parents, this time with his mother's ashes. Also, his job, if you can call it that, throughout the period described in the book, was really strange, which affected the whole atmosphere. I would have had more sympathy if he actually had had a normal job and was running out of money and so on, but since he can apparently waste his life doing whatever he feels like, it's very hard for me to feel sympathetic about any of his so-called problems. So his parents died when he was over twenty years old? Big fucking deal. Welcome to the real world, kiddo.