After pseudo-starting it earlier this year, I finally sat down and read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (562 pages) from start to finish last week. It was quite good (just like Riese and practically every newspaper/magazine/blog I read told me it would be). I really liked the way that the Patty/Walter relationship progressed throughout the novel. It’s amazing how the first part of Freedom sets up this typical yuppyish suburban family, you make all of these assumptions about them, and they turn out to be sooo much more than that. The parts about the birds got a bit tiresome at parts, but they made a good metaphor/motif, I guess. Also, I loved the shots that Franzen took against “indie” culture, NPR, and liberalism in a totally clever and insidery way that can only be achieved by someone who actually fits into that stereotype a bit. It wasn’t like conservative cheap shots at liberalism AT ALL. Franzen was engaging in some self-mocking at the same time as he was poking fun at the characters, which prevented the satire from becoming legitimately mean IMHO. Anyways, the book was super well-written, I felt legitimately emotionally attached to the characters, and Franzen perfectly captured a little subset of American society.