I will admit that at first, I thought that this book was a complete waste of time and was extremely poorly written. It does take some time to understand the deeper meaning of the book. The way I understood the book was that is was about Holdren struggling to come to terms with the meaning of maturity. The "annoying" anticlimactic structure of the book leads itself to that meaning. It is a good read, although it is a few steps short of my liking It is definitely an intellectual read.