Year in Books - Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace.

There’s a special pleasure in reading anything David Foster Wallace wrote. This collection of essays ranges from the strange world of the pornography industry to the nuances of political identities in the 21st century and to, as the name suggests, the ethics of boiling lobsters alive and eating them.

There’s no doubt in my mind that DFW is the greatest writer of our generation; if there’s anyone better, I haven’t read their work. He manages to be hilarious, thorough, and incredibly thoughtful about all of his subjects. He researches everything deeply and meticulously, often to an almost ridiculous extent.

It’s almost as though DFW consistently channels all of those thoughts and ideas floating around our conscious and subconscious collective minds and articulates those ideas in a way we could only hope to chance upon here and there by sheer accident. It’s so refreshing to read anything he writes, I feel as though I must slowly go through his works as I live my life since they’re such a special treat, and well, he’s gone forever.

Don’t just consider this book, read it, love it, become a more thoughtful human in the process.