A few weeks ago I finished reading Dave Eggers’ “Zeitoun” but for a multitude of reasons — mainly laziness — I neglected to post about it.

It’s the story of a family living in New Orleans during Katrina, and really about the experience of the father before, during and after the storm. If you’ve read Eggers’ “What Is The What” you’ll recognize the same style of exploring complex issues connected to a historical event through one person’s eyes.

It’s one of those stories that really shows how quickly we can move on and consume the next event without stopping to fully examine what just happened. We’re all sort of familiar with the broad strokes of Katrina — the rooftop rescues, the nightmare at the Superdome, the broken levees — but it’s what people like Zeitoun saw and were subjected to in New Orleans that really give the situation its gravity.

I don’t want to get much into the story and spoil things, so I’ll just mention a somewhat relevant quote that pretty well sums up how I’m feeling about my own project:

“It’s so slow sometimes, so terribly so sometimes, but progress is being made…If he can picture it, it can be. This has been the pattern of his life: ludicrous dreams followed by hours and days and years of work and then a reality surpassing his wildest hopes and expectations.”