I enjoyed reading this book I just never got around to writing a review. I will continue to read works by this author

I tried to read something different and it just wasn’t for me. The characters weren’t likable and there was so many f bombs. Just not one of my favorites.

I just wanted to read ONLY about the punk bassist girlfriend. I think I gave up on this book a little and perhaps I should try again... honestly, maybe I"ve outgrown this genre of hyperfocussing on the impact of Internet obsession? Brooding dudes, cliches about millennials and boomers, and Gen-x-ers? I don't know! I want to like this but I might have hit peak this genre after my last read of a Douglas Coupland book.

Wow, I didn't expect this thought provoking, radical novel about the generational divide of Baby Boomers to Generation X- Millennials! A well built up story, told by three overlapping characters, with different perceptions of events and experiences. Very good and interesting. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the e-reader for my review. All opinions are my own.

This was an interesting look at the generational divide between the baby boomers and the millennials. I am part of neither generation I am a Gen Xer, my kids are millennials and my parents are baby boomers so I found this book interesting. The story is told from the perspective of Mark, Kathy, and Julia. Mark was living in New York trying to be a journalist, but now he is back home in his parents basement raging at the baby boomers online. Kassie has reinvented herself once an accomplished violinist she is now part of an up-and-coming media company. Julia is Mark‘s mom and she’s dealing with the fact that her life isn’t quite as radical as she thought it would be. Growing up in the 60s she never thought she’d live a conventional life. This was an intriguing concept and very thought-provoking, however I had a hard time connecting with these characters. This was a book that just left me feeling OK, it wasn’t bad it just wasn’t great either. I did think the writing was pretty darn good though, so I will definitely read another book from this author.

Mr. Torday has touched on the generational gap that i associated with President Obama’s Hope and Change era. Boomers don’t want change, they are now living better than they ever expected, and Millennials are trying to create a world where They don’t have to work hard to enjoy the good things in life. So all the boomers can see is change of work ethic, a life easier than they had and the drive of a different direction in living.. Digital technology. Job gaps, lifestyle envy. These are hard things for millennials to accept when they see how their parents and grandparents live. I, myself, a Gen X’er had these same enviable reactions. I couldn’t understand why i couldn’t get, as i saw it, to the instantaneous success that my parents had or older friends had. As a parent of numerous millennials, i see the struggles that they have because everything is at their fingertips and still slip through quicker than they can grab a hold of them. Their fields are saturated with workers. My children are more conservative than most millennials and still i see the struggle of the kid who goes the unorthodox way of a college degree and the hope they have of find something that can help them live a great life; not just getting by having to work two crappy part-time jobs,
This book covers some of that, but is also told in such a humorous way that you don’t feel as if anyone is being lectured, slapped on hard (although, it can be biting at times) so that even a boomer could read this book and not be too offended.

Thanks, Netgalley, Daniel Torday and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read Boomer1 in lieu of my honest review.

Cool entertaining story and I'm loving this book cover so much 😍💛

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

There was so much promise for this novel and I wanted to like it so badly but it seemed to miss the mark. Cassie’s character was likeable and well developed while Mark seemed to be all over the place. Julia, on the other hand, was completely forgettable.

Like I mentioned, the topic of Baby Boomer vs Millennials and the impacts of each generation is a great concept but the execution was poor. This could have been a great conversation starter. I even like the idea of the story basically poking fun at itself but that all ended up falling flat.

I may possible read more of Daniel Torday’s work in the future because I do think that he writes well.

One of my new favorite books! This author has such a way with words the pages flew by in no time! I can’t wait to see the next work by this author! This was such a joy to read!

This seems like a timely story. It covers all of our current big generations- Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. I'm the Baby Boomer and I work with the up and comings. I feel really bad for the last group. This book is really all about them and the characters look familiar to many of the kids I know. The characters were interesting and the plot was strong. It's well written and the author writes with some authority on the lives of the young adults in the story. But, as good as it was, it wasn't a story for me. Maybe I'm a tad out of touch with that age group. But I am absolutely certain that the twenty somethings and even early 30's will enjoy and relate to this book.

I was unable to finish this one, it was far too boring and the characters un-relatable. Maybe this just is not my kind of book.

The plot of Boomer1 by Daniel Torday is essentially that what starts as a verbal diatribe gets out of hand. The context is generational stereotypes. I am not the reader for books with a ton of gratuitous curse words, descriptions of sexual encounters, scattered perspectives, and stereotypes magnified to present the worst of what they represents. Sadly, for all these reasons, I am not at all the reader for this book.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2019/05/boomer1.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

A fascinating, timely, and thought-provoking meditation on the craziness of our internet-obsessed culture, the generational divide between Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials, and just how far our lives can drift from what we've planned, Daniel Torday's Boomer1 is both funny and eerily prescient.

The concept of this book is intriguing, but the book itself lacked something along the way. Also, the ending also didn’t give me a complete sense of closure. The message that Baby Boomers should retire and free up traditional jobs for the next generation definitely rings true, but I also enjoyed the character Cassie, especially how she became successful in her career by making the most of the opportunities presented to her rather than waiting for her dream job to simply fall in her lap. Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC.

This contemporary novel is funny, kind of dark, and a joy to read! The boomers vs. millenials saga rages on.

I couldn't continue with this book about yet another angry-white-man blaming some group for the fact he is not living the life to which he feels entitled. In this case, the group happens to be baby boomers, but substitute blacks, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, etc. and you can see the hatefulness of his rants. I don't know who the intended audience is for this book, or whether it was intended to be satirical (it wasn't funny), but I'm not spending any more time with it. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Published by St. Martin's Press on September 18, 2018

Boomer1 imagines a new way to divide Americans, young against old, as a social movement fueled by viral videos sparks resentment of Baby Boomers, prompting Boomers to direct their anger at Millennials. The risk of “us-against-them” movements, according to Boomer1, is that “at some point animosity based in the broad strokes of identity simply pervaded, its origin obscured, only the intangible residue of its conflict remaining.” True enough.

It’s also true (and a point Boomer1 makes effectively) that “generations” are just demographic groups, defined by arbitrary “born between” brackets, while members of a defined generation are individuals who may have little in common with each other. The two key characters in Boomer1 are Mark Brumfeld, who is living in his parents’ basement and raging at Boomers who refuse to retire (as if Boomer retirement would automatically qualify him for a high-end job), and his former girlfriend Cassie Black, who scores a high-end job using digital-world skills that come more naturally to Millennials than Boomers. In other words, Cassie’s new career undercuts the foundation of Mark’s outrage, although she’s reluctant to tell him about her good luck.

Before all of that happens, Cassie attends Wellesley and then returns to her roots as a bluegrass fiddler. She has a relationship with a woman and then with Mark, who plays in the same band, and then cheats on Mark with the woman. Relationships are not Cassie’s strength.

At some point after Cassie breaks up with Mark, she sees that he has changed his name to Isaac and is starring in viral YouTube videos that he calls Boomer Missives. A failure as an intellectual, as a journalist, as a doctoral candidate in search of a teaching gig, and as a boyfriend, Mark moved in with his parents before launching “the most infamous domestic revolutionary group in the country,” based on his perception that all Millennials are screwed because acquisitive Baby Boomers, who care only about themselves, have raped the planet’s resources and destroyed the global economy, leaving nothing for the Millennials. Mark’s videos advance a manifesto: “Resist much, obey little.” Boom boom.

Mark’s complaints that Boomers have not been good custodians of the environment are fair, although unfocused. More than half of all Boomers actually care about global warming and unequal wealth distribution and the other topics of Mark’s Boomer Missives. Many of Mark’s complaints are self-serving and ill-conceived — yes, his social security taxes help the elderly, not him, but the system was never designed to be a savings account, and the next generation will be paying taxes for Mark’s support — but any complainer can find an audience of self-identified victims living in their parents’ basements, so it is credible that Mark’s videos would go viral.

The novel alternates between the stories of Cassie and Mark, with occasional digressions to explore the life of Mark’s mother Julia and her love affair with “pure American” bluegrass music before she begins to cope with hearing loss. Toward the end of the novel, Julia emerges as an important character, a sympathetic representative of the Boomers who has done nothing to fuel the anger of the Millennials. [Disclosure: As a Boomer, I might be inclined to have greater sympathy for Boomers than Millennial readers of Boomer1.]

Leaderless social movements in the digital age (like Occupy) tend to gather steam quickly and to fade just as quickly. Boomer1 explores that dynamic in a story that seems plausible, even if not all of its events are convincing. (I mean, even viewing them as generational icons rather than musicians, how could anyone dislike Jerry Garcia or Neil Young?) Nor have I sensed a wave of hostility against Boomers that Millennials might ride upon, but as a Boomer, it is possible and perhaps likely that I am entirely oblivious to what Millennials are thinking.

In any event, I view the larger message of the story as more important than the details. The story asks whether the immediacy of video has supplanted the power of the written word. The advent of YouTube and social media and the dark web make it easy for people to spark something they don’t anticipate by venting anger that they haven’t carefully considered and don’t really understand. The fire they spark might be damaging, but should they be judged harshly for sparking it? It’s hard to think of Mark as a bad person, even if his actions set events in motion that eventually have a bad outcome, but media pundits would clearly blame him (pundits are in the business of blaming) despite his benign intent. On the other hand, perhaps anyone who uses video to fuel rage against an amorphous “other” deserves a bit of judgment (although there is a world of difference between deserving disapproval and deserving punishment).

In addition to asking meaningful questions about how social movements evolve in the Millennial age, Boomer1 works best for me as the story of youngish people trying to figure out who they are. Daniel Torday uses a wealth of detail to create Mark and Cassie as individuals rather than Millennial stereotypes. I also like the juxtaposition of things that change relatively quickly (technology, generations) with things that don’t (the Rocky Mountains, the struggle to make sense of life). In that sense, Boomer1 offers important insights into both the things that divide generations and the things that will always connect them.

RECOMMENDED

Cassie Black and Mark Brumfeld are two of the three main characters through whom we experience the story in Boomer1. The other is Mark’s mother Julia. All three pursued a musical career and came up short in different ways. Mark dreamed of the academic life, writing articles and teaching, a distinguished professor. Sadly, he was born too late, well after the commodification of higher education that replaced tenured positions with adjunct professors, academic serfs who would earn more as a barista. Cassie played in a band with a woman she loved but when replaced by another, she fell into a convenient musical-hetero affair with Mark, work plus parental approval in one. However, even Mark’s mother could see Julia was attracted to women and she soon was offered a high-paying job fact-checking listicles and such. Julia probably was more successful with her music, joining a band headlined by one of her heroes, but then getting to know your heroes is always disappointing.

Mark’s financial precarity forces him to move home and become the millennial stereotype living in his parents’ basement. He fixates on Cassie, his unrequited love more fierce than his love when they were together. “That was the trouble with having love smeared all over the inside of you . You could wash all you wanted and your fingers were still bound to be greasy.” He cannot get over her. Even more stereotypical he begins ranting on the internet. He calls himself Boomer1 and rants about the Boomers who have the jobs, the money, the power and won’t make way for young people. He has a point.

On my list of Books I Want to Read But Have Not Found the TIme is “A Generation of Sociopaths” by Bruce cannon Gibney. It’s a nonfiction work marshaling the evidence, should we need it, that the Baby Boomer generation has been singularly blessed and singularly selfish, reaping the benefits of post-war civic investment and prosperity and refusing to do for their children and grandchildren what was done for them.


Boomer1 is a difficult book to evaluate. In many ways, it so very banal, but that gives it an authenticity, capturing the boring tedium of their lives. You would think with a whole movement kicked off by Mark’s internet rants, his life would be exciting, but it’s not. He works as a barista and sounds off on the internet. Cassie’s life shrinks as her salary expands. She goes from thinking of writing to fact-checking to listicles to video editing, leaving behind words almost completely. Julia becomes increasing deaf and increasingly tired of her son no matter how much she loves him. It’s all quite ordinary and sad.

But, sometimes Torday so perfectly captures the zeitgeist. For example, Mark becomes captive to the screen. “There was a lot of journalism, a lot of information well packaged, well written, and well researched, that didn’t pass his purview when he had sat at his computer, waiting for social media to tell him what he should read next. Though he had given his twenties over to editing a magazine, somehow he’d now come to prioritize the speed and impermanence of what he saw on his computer, same as everyone else.”

Time and again, Torday wrote something so perfectly beautiful, I paused to just enjoy the words. For example, “The ailanthus trees spilled green oval leaves on the ground like they were undressing, and when Regan didn’t invite Cassie back up to her place, Cassie had no choice but to walk back to her own apartment, feeling jealous at the scantily clad trees the whole way back.” Sometimes Torday’s mordant take on modernity just struck me as perfect, such as when Julia’s husband takes her to a symphony playing the Grateful Dead and she is appalled, as she sees herself among the crowd “of not aging hippies but old people, people who had decades before fought their fights and strove their striving and now were in a position to sit in a concert hall on a Friday night in Baltimore and let the teeth be extracted from the music that mattered to them most…”

This is a strange book. There’s so much to like about the writing, but the story and the characters are not nearly as interesting as the words.

I received an e-galley of Boomer1 from the publisher through NetGalley.

Boomer1 at St. Martin’s Press | Macmillan
Daniel Torday author site

DNFd at 50%. I think this just wasn't for me. I couldn't get into it, sadly. Wish I had better feedback about it, but I don't. Nothing was upsetting, just couldn't click with it. Maybe will try again in the future.

I feel like I really need to reread this whole book again to fully appreciate it. This is the complex tale of Mark, Cassie, and Mark's mom, Julia, and how contemporary life may be perceived and lived out, and how memories, especially of music, can shape our existence.

I love how Torday wrote the chapters highlighting and alternating between Mark, Cassie, and Julia's experiences. I loved the vocabulary he used, though I confess I was not familiar with (being a boomer, myself) some of the acronyms used by the millennials. I loved how Torday wrote of the intense raw emotions experienced by the characters.

The subject of the book was new to me - a conflict that may be more prevalent in our current culture than I have been aware of. Because of that, I was compelled to keep turning pages, and search for a satisfying resolution. Ultimately, I'm not sure I loved the ending, but getting to it was a fascinating ride.

I recommend this book to my fellow Boomers.