i think i just need to stop reading books with such high expectations because those are usually the books i end up disliking the most. this was one of those cases. "the idiot" by elif batuman is a book that came highly recommended from people whose taste in books i trust greatly, so i waited on a hold list at my library for several months in order to read this. unfortunately, this was just a total miss for me. 

selin is a turkish-american girl who starts her first year at harvard, and the story essentially covers her freshman experiences in near-excruciating detail. she moves into her dorm, tries to get along with her roommates, takes a bunch of classes, and ends up in this weird limbo situation with an older hungarian guy named ivan. the book is a bildungsroman and goes through selin's college life with a nostalgic and utterly accurate depiction of the trials and tribulations of a girl's first year at college. however, that accuracy and agonizing attention to detail results in a book where nothing ever really happens and i found the pace to be tedious. 

there are interesting bits and pieces here and there that kept me going. for example, selin ends up in linguistics and so, language and communication end up being a big theme in her relationships with others and especially ivan. the story is also set in the 90s where the internet was just starting to take off, so there's that additional dynamic of communicating irl vs online. the book also manages to perfectly capture the vibe of the ivory tower and academia with how deeply it delves into intellectual stimulation and references to obscure academic topics, and i was reminded of my own college days at a liberal arts school. however, these didn't make up for the slow pace and the tedious ramblings here and there.