You can tell what podcasts I’ve been listening to based on what ends up in my library bag. Don’t believe me? Surely you remember my snapping up Kate Atkinson after listening to her on Nancy Pearl’s podcast a while back. Over the last week at Company X, I’ve been listening to old episodes of things like Stuff You Should Know, Pop Culture Happy Hour, The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast and Extra Hot Great until all my favorites are back from their holiday breaks. And on Thursday night I was sitting in the Periodical Room at the local library going through the 2010 back issues of The New Yorker looking for Anthony Lane’s essay on the Eurovision Song Contest.

And along with a couple of The New Yorkers (because I really needed to know if I was hip enough to shop in Brooklyn? Come on, we all know the answer is a resounding “NO!”), I snapped up Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad. Jennifer Egan is not one of my usual suspects when it comes to books.  But Tara Ariano from the Extra Great Hot podcast loved it and a book that has a chapter with a kid’s Power Point presentation was a worth a look. Best case scenario, it’s like the diagrams in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Worst case scenario, it’s an author trying to fill space to make a page count. But let’s face it, A Visit to The Goon Squad wasn’t the first book out of the bag and devoured on Thursday night. That would be the magazines. Or Friday night. That would be Pamela Ribon’s Why Moms Are Weird.

But come Saturday night, I’m kind of bored. Not in the mood to read anything too heavy, too intellectual, too out there, too change your life now. So I settled on Mr Couch with a blankie and A Visit From The Goon Squad. Even though I had flicked through the book at the library and read the jacket copy it didn’t click until chapter three that record executive Bennie Salazar was Bennie from. Even though I had read chapter three (As Me If I Care) as the fiction selection in the March 8, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. I never said I was terribly brilliant…

Unlike Tara Ariano who if I’m remembering her comments from Episode #12 of the Extra Great Hot podcast loved A Visit From the Goon Squad, I didn’t stop and think of five friends who needed to read this book ASAP. The concept of intertwining lives of people who might not realize their connections over several decades is an interesting one.

The object of love Bennie Salazar from chapter three/Ask Me If I Care really becomes truly alive as a person when his character is in a basement home studio of a could have been sister act. But Sasha the compulsive thief from the first chapter didn’t seem too interesting to me even if she had a dark past as a runaway in Naples. Dolly aka La Doll, the hot publicist of the moment reminded me of Kelly Cutrone in her intense love for her daughter Lulu. And a future where tiny infants of three months using their own smart phones doesn’t seem that far off. I’m waiting for my toddler nieces to have their own iPhones any minute now.

Overall, A Visit From the Goon Squad works best for me if it’s treated as a collection of short stories in the mode of Margaret Atwood’s Moral Disorder or Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. While I might not sing it’s praises to the heavens, I’ll give it a re-read if I encounter one day in the fiction stacks.