Krakauer is always a good muckraker. In this slim volume he turns his skills to bear on someone who he once trusted, Greg Mortenson, whose charity organization Krakauer had donated lots of money too, only to start doubting Mortenson's work and honesty. My cynical, pessimist side wishes there were a book like this for every feel-good heartwarming pop-memoir of miraculous altruism and supposed world-changing vision, because I'm sure way more of this goes on all the time than we ever see or suspect. This book just methodically rips to shreds all the smoke and mirrors that Mortenson employed over years of pretending to do good. It's pretty satisfying, though saddening too.

I forget if I read the male or female version. Anyway, it was incredible, easily one of the most innovative and fascinating works of fiction i've ever read.

author: Cory Doctorow

name: Steev

average rating: 3.96

book published: 2008

rating: 4

read at: 2013/12/24

date added: 2013/12/25

shelves: fun, novels, own-it, politics

author: Davis Schneiderman

name: Steev

average rating: 4.30

book published: 2013

rating: 5

read at: 2013/12/21

date added: 2013/12/21

shelves: art, fun, novels, wishlist

review:

author: James Frey

name: Steev

average rating: 3.74

book published: 1970

rating: 5

read at: 2013/12/04

date added: 2013/12/05

shelves: novels, fun, own-it

review:
This book proves that Frey was not a flash-in-the-pan with "A Million Little Pieces." Here he takes the same intense and emotional style turned to focus on the city of Los Angeles and a variety of fictional but very realistic inhabitants. I kept wanting the various little story threads to somehow intersect, which is one thing that drives the book forward. The structure is a neverending alternation between various historical and statistical factoids about the city and various characters, mostly newly arriving in the city and trying to set up a life for themselves. Some of the characters Frey keeps coming back to and building a plot, others you only see once and then never again. It's a bit dizzying and sometimes frustrating but ultimately forms an experience that is gripping and wise. It makes me glad I moved away from L.A. as soon as I did, although the book also makes me kind of want to move there.

author: David Wong

name: Steev

average rating: 3.96

book published: 2007

rating: 5

read at: 2013/11/20

date added: 2013/11/22

shelves: fun, novels, own-it

review:
This is the kind of book I just don't want to put down. It's hilarious, a bit scary, profound, and profane. In the middle of fighting zombies and mutants and demons, the narrator throws around some great wisdom as well as some comedic slacker banality. It's brilliant, and once you pick it up and open it to the first page, you won't need me or anyone else to persuade you that it's worth reading. You'll just keep reading.

author: Frank Schaeffer

name: Steev

average rating: 3.55

book published: 2007

rating: 4

read at: 2013/11/09

date added: 2013/11/09

shelves: spirit-self, own-it, politics

review:

author: Jonathan Franzen

name: Steev

average rating: 3.62

book published: 2002

rating: 5

read at: 2013/10/20

date added: 2013/10/21

shelves: spirit-self, own-it, art

review:
A variety of essays from the mid-90s up through 2002, some of these are kind of too outdated to be of very much use, but others are timeless, and of those many ring eerily and still painfully true even though Franzen was talking about an earlier, less extreme version of an issue we're still facing today (the plight of the publishing industry, the dismal state of literature and reading, the polarization of politics, to name a few). All in all these non-fiction pieces create a picture of a writer and a person who is just as skilled as in his fiction with depicting a personality afflicted with depression, anger, conflicting and contradictory feelings, sadness and grief, and frustration with current trends and establishments. In other words, this book not only teaches how to be alone, but also shows me that I'm not, in that I share a lot of the above with him and the interior of my head as I think about those things looks a lot like the picture he's painted of himself. And this is one of the best functions of literature, whether fiction or non, that anyone could hope for.

author: John Summers

name: Steev

average rating: 4.50

book published: 2013

rating: 5

read at: 2013/09/20

date added: 2013/09/20

shelves: fun, own-it, politics

review:

author: Alejandro Zambra

name: Steev

average rating: 3.85

book published: 2006

rating: 4

read at: 2013/09/09

date added: 2013/09/09

shelves: fun, novels

review:
Kind of like a latino Tao Lin, only not as good. That same sort of opaque narrative voice where you don't get any, or very little, inner monologue of the characters, just kind of a ghostly relation of events from the outside. Somehow Tao Lin makes this work and often be hilarious and profound, but Zambra can't pull this off as well.