JBSmoove2

What was the point?

Revisado: 03-28-24

There doesn't seem to be a point to this book, other than to capitalize on Capote's notoriety. It's almost as if a series of publishing executives woke up one day and conspired to push books about Capote, and this book was what was left over after all the good ideas had been purchased by other imprints.

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If You Ever Wondered Why the Nixvm Guy Attracted the Attention of the Feds

Revisado: 07-16-23

Sometimes you encounter world events that confuse you. You take the time to notice that something out of the ordinary is happening, but you don’t really dig too deeply into why that thing is happening. Such is the case with so-called cult leader Keith Raniere, an infamous, 1980s-early-90s multilevel marketing scammer who somehow remained essentially ignored by the feds while he bilked Canadian billionaire heiresses out of 100 million dollars. The feds weren’t even interested in him as he brought third-rate Hollywood actresses into his organization. Yet, when he gets involved with a bunch of Mormons down in Mexico who are calling attention to the fact that United States policies created an unstable, war-like state of affairs, just south of the border, and the US government jumps into action.

The man is convicted, and likely will spend the rest of his life in jail, so commenting on his activities is useless. What is interesting is that the only reason why he’s in jail appears to be the fact that he was intimately involved in calling attention (flamboyantly) to the dangerous state of affairs in Chihuahua, Mexico. One assumes that he would still be bilking Canadian billionaire heiresses out of their money, getting loopy Hollywood actresses to do things most people wouldn’t think about doing, and otherwise living the life of Riley, had he not convinced Mexican Mormons to protest the hell-scape US policy created in their neighborhood.

Everything else about the book is boring.

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The first 30 seconds are crucial

Revisado: 12-05-22

Who's idea was it to start this thing advocating for drug abuse as a useful pastime?

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Long-story short, he becomes a socialist

Revisado: 11-14-22

I'm pretty certain that this was on the mandatory reading list when I was in high school. I never read it, and having finally listened to most of it 30 years on, I cannot fathom why it has any reputation as worthy literature.

It's agitprop. Boring, repetitive agitprop. Read "The Great Gatsby" instead. Same essential story arc (people are boorish, and you don't get what you want in life, no matter how hard you work), but what journey.

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How could a tragedy be so boring?

Revisado: 11-10-22

For the life of me I can't understand how the author managed to make this so mind numbingly boring. The Gulag Archipelago was tedious, but that was the point: authoritarian government is bureaucratic and brutal.

There's no reason why this story had to plod on, endlessly, with no real point other than, "Imperial Japan bad, China good.". Granted, now let's tell the story in a compelling way.

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super, just super.

Revisado: 08-31-22

A simple story written about 30 years after the events depicted therein, so things feel fresh. What a joy to learn that bad people were just as bad back then (even the gals), but a little depressing to realize that law enforcement was just as incompetent then as today.

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Miranda Veracruz de la Jolla Cardinal

Revisado: 08-04-22

Remember that character from Married With Children who went out of her way to pronounce Spanish words very authentically? But everything else that came out of her mouth was standard, mid-west American English?

This narrator of this book does that but with French proper nouns. For the entire book. After a while it's a bit comical, but distracting enough to take a listener out of the flow of the story. About 1/2 way through this book I lost track of the people in the story, mainly because I couldn't figure out who she was mentioning in any given sentence. For all I know she slipped in a bunch of Klingon names from Star Trek.

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What was the point?

Revisado: 07-10-22

Sometimes it'd be nice if an author, in the immediate aftermath of "I've got a GREAT idea", would just take a minute and say out loud, "well, maybe not a GREAT idea."

This book represents a tragic example of someone who noticed a lot of esoteric nonsense and compiled into a book with an imagined grad unified theory that will explain everything. It doesn't .

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Racism! It's not just for Americans anymore.

Revisado: 07-02-22

Why can't people just tell a story anymore? Why must everything be "contextualized" through "a lens"? Some Aussie aboriginals were treated poorly. Maybe even most. Don't know. Can't know. And, here's the thing, nobody in this story knows from personal experience either. So what's the point of going through the ritual of exploring The Racism? Checking the box to make a suit happy.

Could've been an interesting story of a man wrongfully accused, a real "dingo got my baby" sort of thing. Instead the story gets sidetracked for no real narrative reason.

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E, nun, ci, ate

Revisado: 07-02-22

Someone paid this guy to swallow his consonants. Why? You have an unlimited number of minutes to tell your story. "Impor-nt" is not the same as "important," and listening to this guy is a bit like listening to a 13 year old explaining what she learned in her Philosophy 101 class.

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