Nonfiction Book Reviews

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I was discussing books with a coworker the other day (hi, Corrine!) and she told me that she has tried time and again to read nonfiction books because she feels like she should.  After all, you learn so much more from nonfiction than you do fiction, and she wants to learn.

But she says that she can’t get through any nonfiction books because they are all so boor-ring!!!  She said (and I quote), “I start reading, and within minutes, my head is down on my chest, and I’m sleeping.  I just can’t stay awake through those books!”

I used to have that perception of nonfiction books too.  Nonfiction?  No way.  That’s boring, dry stuff!  Let’s read some fiction, where there’s action and storylines and FUN stuff.  Right?  Yeah, I see you nodding your head.  It’s true - fiction is almost universally thought of as the interesting books, and nonfiction as the dry tomes that only desperately dull people read.

Leaving aside the debate of whether I am desperately dull or not (no comments from the peanut gallery!) I think that there are a lot of nonfiction books that do not deserve the title of dull, and that anyone could enjoy reading.  I figured that it was about time I put together a list of my top ten favorite nonfiction books.  None of these books are academic treatises on a subject, I give you my solemn oath.

Most of these books I’ve written reviews of on here; in those cases, I have linked to the reviews.  Also, I am trying to link to a variety of books, so that if you’re not interested in biographies, for example, you might want to read a book about finances or relationships.  So it isn’t that I have ADHD or something (although that is possible…)

Let’s get going, shall we?

1. Marley and Me by John Grogan: If you do not laugh while reading this book, there is a good chance you are dead.  I just thought you should be aware of that.  There could be some sort of freaky sixth sense thing going on here.  I have not watched Marley and Me the movie, so I have zero input on that (although here’s a great review of Marley and Me the movie from another site).  Marley and Me the book is actually the book I ended up recommending to my coworker.  We’ll see if she enjoys it as much as I think she will.
2. Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand: No top ten list of mine would be complete without including my other favorite animal nonfiction book, Seabiscuit.  There is a lot more to this book than just Seabiscuit the horse, which at times can seem overwhelming, but it really helps set the stage for horse racing, which makes the racing portions of the book come alive.  Again, I have not watched the movie.  Anyone seeing a trend here?  Hmmm…
3. John Adams by David McCullough: This is one I have not written a review of yet, but it was one of the first nonfiction books that I ever read, and absolutely turned me on to biographies of historical figures, and especially biographies written by David McCullough.  He is a fantastic writer; at the end of John Adams, I actually cried because, you know, John Adams died.  (Hope I didn’t just ruin it for anyone.)  But that’s how strongly McCullough makes you care about his subjects of his books.  I did write a review of his masterpiece, 1776: Illustrated Edition, so check that out.  And no, I did not watch the John Adams movie either, in case you were wondering.
4. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson: There is no way to walk away from this book without feeling inspired, uplifted, and full of the can-do spirit.  Well, I guess you could if you were dead, but didn’t we already go over that?  Anyway, when I read a fiction book of how someone works hard to overcome incredible odds, I nod and smile and think, “Well of course he did!  It’s easy to do that in the fiction world.”  But when I read nonfiction book about a homeless mountain climber building hundreds of schools in the Middle East and doing his part to bring peace to the world…Well, it’s just hard to argue with that, you know?  And even harder to not want to do something yourself to help.
5. Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls: If you’re up for a depressing but touching and truly wonderful memoir, then this is just the book for you.  There is a reason this book was on the New York Bestseller’s list for ages.  If you have not read it before, go forth and read.  I guarantee your complete satisfaction, or your…well, sorry, you’re just screwed.  But really, you should be satisfied.  Most likely.
6. Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall: If you’re into polygamy books, then you absolutely must check out Stolen Innocence.  I’ve read most of the polygamy books out there, and I enjoyed this one the most.  Elissa manages to tell her depressing story without being completely depressing and/or bitter to the bitter end.  It is also the best edited out of the polygamy books; some of the other ones could have stood to have a little better editing job done.  If you read one polygamy book, make it this one.
7. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman: In the crowded books-about-relationships field, Five Love Languages is consistently rated one of the top books of the genre.  There is a reason for this: The book plain makes sense.  If you’re in the market for a great book to help you out with your relationship with your loved one, then you must buy this book.  Between Five Love Languages and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, you honestly cannot go wrong.
8. Hands of My Father by Myron Uhlberg: This is a fantastic memoir of a boy growing up during the Depression, son of two deaf parents.  I will be posting my review of it soon, but suffice it to say that I LOVED it.  Really and truly.  Check it out on Amazon in the meanwhile.  You won’t be sorry.
9. Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey: If you’re looking for a book on personal finances (how to manage your money) then this it.  Look no further.  Ramsey manages to make the book not only chockful of interesting information, but also interesting, inspiring, and easy to read.
10. Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe by Robin Kerrod and Carole Stott: Of course I couldn’t put together a list of my favorite nonfiction books without listing an astronomy book.  There are a lot of books that offer collections of space pictures, but I have to say that this the best one I’ve ever come across.  Gorgeous pictures, quality printing job, insightful info…You really can’t get any better than this book for space pictures.

So, did I miss any?  What is your favorite nonfiction book?  And if you say you don’t have one, then get reading!  I’d suggest starting with one the above books.  All are guaranteed to be snore free.

Or something like that…

Hava

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the headline for an article, Herman Rosenblat’s Holocaust memoir of love is exposed as a hoax. Worried, I clicked on the link.  I have read some Holocaust memoirs, and I didn’t like the idea of being duped.

Well, in this case, I was fine - Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived wasn’t scheduled to be released until next month. I hadn’t been hoodwinked after all.

Except, I have been before.  I read another biography called Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, and it was only afterwards, as I did a couple of searches on Google, that I found out that much of the book was made up.  I was not impressed.

One of the latest cases of fake memoirs comes from Margaret B Jones (her real name was Margaret Seltzer, btw) who wrote a memoir that had absolutely nothing to do with reality. At least Angel at the Fence and Bringing Down the House had some vague resemblance to the real world.

Entitled Love and Consequences, it was supposedly about Margaret being a drug runner for the Bloods in LA, growing up as a foster child in the LA system, blah blah blah.  Not a word of it was true.  She was caught when her sister saw her picture for an interview done with the New York Times, and called in to tell them that it was all a lie.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at their next family reunion.

And don’t even get me started on that Frey dude.  I think we’ve all heard enough about him to last us a lifetime.  Poor Oprah - she said that the Angel at the Fence story was “the single greatest love story…we’ve ever told on air.”  That, coupled with her initial backing and enthusiasm for James Frey, makes me think that she’s going to be a lot more choosy about which guests she has on the air from now on.

So comes the inevitable question: Why?  Why would authors take the chance at being revealed as fakes before the world, when they could write the story either as it really did happen (now there’s a novel idea!) or write it as fiction?  To me, the chance of discovery is just too great.

Do you really think you can go on a national book tour, have your book made into a movie, etc, and never have anyone catch on?  What, are all of your childhood friends living in caves, where they wouldn’t see the coverage on your triumphant book tour?  (And I am assuming here that if someone has the balls to completely fabricate a story and get it published as truth, that they’d also dream that the book would be a smashing success.  What would the point be if no one cared about the memoir after all?)

Here’s my armchair analysis: These people are whacked.  They have some inner need to be recognized beyond what their life would naturally give to them, and the only way to get that recognition that they crave is to make up a life much more exciting than the one they really lived through.

In yesterday’s review of Identical Strangers, I said that the book was not an interesting read, and in the comment section, Hindleyite jokingly suggested that they should have taken “creative license” with their story to make it more interesting.  Perhaps that’s what these fake memoir authors were afraid of: That if they didn’t “spice things up” that no one would care enough to read.

The bottom line though, is that fake memoirs give a bad reputation to the whole industry.  It is hard to trust what you read, when there have been so many bad apples passed off as truth.

By the way, Love and Consequences was published by the same publishing house as A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.  They don’t have a real stellar track record here.  (I bet Oprah is counting her lucky stars she didn’t invite Margaret Jones onto her show too.   How much bad luck can one talk show host have?)  Perhaps this publishing house and Oprah can join forces and hire an investigative team in an attempt to not get mud smeared all over their faces again.

So, to all of my easy chair psychologists reading this: Why do you think the authors of the fake memoirs do what they do?  Recognition?  Money?  To see if they can get away with it?  Because they’re flat-out nuts?  Tell me what you think below.

I picked up Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand while doing check-in.  When I saw the book, I thought, “I’ve always wanted to read that book.  I wonder if I should take it home with me.”  Within seconds, I was pulling another copy of the book out of the book drop.

“Hmm…” I thought.  “Kinda weird two people would return the same book on the same day.”  And then I pulled out another copy.  And another.  All together, I pulled out seven copies of that book - I’m guessing that some local group got together and read it as a book of the month or something. ??? But I took it as a sign that I ought to get my rear in gear and read this book that was apparently so good, they just had to make it into a movie.

Now that I’ve read Seabiscuit, I understand why it became a Hollywood blockbuster.  This book is absolutely fantastic.  The writing is superb, the pictures are terrific (I read the “Special Illustrated Collector’s Edition” which I highly recommend - the pictures definitely added something special to the book) and the pacing impeccable.

By the end of the book, I felt like I knew Seabiscuit as well as an old friend.  And when he died (sorry if I ruined the ending there, but this story did take place in the ’30s) I cried.  I know that’s rather ridiculous (what was I expecting to have happen?) but it’s just that this horse had so much spirit, it was heart-breaking to finally say goodbye to him.

One thing that made this book so fantastic is that it wasn’t just about Seabiscuit.  It was also about the Great Depression, about horseracing, about what it takes to be a jockey, and especially about the people around Seabiscuit, who saw his true potential.  Seabiscuit was doomed to a life of obscurity, until these men saw something in him that no one else did.  I felt like I got to know the men who loved Seabiscuit, and came to love them too.

A couple of things to keep in mind: I don’t particularly count myself as a huge horse lover.  My grandfather had horses that I rode as a child, and they were quite simply some of the orneriest things you’d ever come across.  I got stepped on and thrown off more times than I care to count.  So yes, you can love this book even if you don’t love horses.

Secondly, I have never watched Seabiscuit the movie, so I did not pick up the book with preconceived notions.  Since I have never paid attention to the world of horse racing before, I knew almost nothing about Seabiscuit.

So if even someone like me (with little knowledge or understanding of horses, horse racing, or Seabiscuit in particular) could absolutely love and adore this book, it seems like pretty much anyone could.

Now I just need to watch the movie.  While I’m watching Seabiscuit, I also need to watch Marley and Me, another book that I’ve read and reviewed that’s been turned into a movie.   I really loved Marley the book, so I’m hoping I’ll love the movie just as much.

As for Seabiscuit: An American Legend I give it an easy 5 out of 5 stars.  Heck, I should probably give it a couple of extra stars just ’cause.  If you haven’t read Seabiscuit yet, you need to.  It is easily one of the best books I’ve read in the past year.

Hava

For any readers of young adult paranormal books, Lois Duncan is probably a very familiar name.  She produced such hits as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Hotel for Dogs (another book that is being produced into a movie - this one is coming out in January of 2009.)

I don’t happen to be one of those people - I had heard the name Lois Duncan before and vaguely recognized it, but as far as I can remember, I haven’t read one of her books before.  I saw the book, Who Killed My Daughter? by Lois Duncan while doing check-in on Friday, and was instantly intrigued.  I don’t read true-life murder mysteries by writers like Ann Rule, but I figured that since this was a true-life murder mystery written by the mother of the victim, it would make it more interesting to me.

So I came home with it, and figured that since I was so tired, I would take it into the bedroom with me and read it until I fell asleep for my afternoon nap.  Two hours later, I was wide awake, and thoroughly engrossed in the story.  Unlike most true-life murder mysteries you can find on the bookshelf, I knew that this one ended on a question mark.  Here’s a quotation from the book flap:

Our teenage daughter Kaitlyn was chased down and shot to death while driving home from a girlfriend’s house on a peaceful Sunday evening.  Police dubbed the shooting “random.”  But to our family, the circumstances didn’t add up to “random,” especially after we made the shocking discovery that Kait had been keeping some very dangerous secrets from us…

After spending two years investigating Kait’s death, our family has managed to accumulate enough information to form a fragmented picture of what may have happened to her, but the jigsaw puzzle still lacks the few key pieces that could nail the identity of her killers.  It is my hope that reading Kait’s story will motivate potential informants to supply us with those pieces.

The shooting happened July 16, 1989, and the book was published in 1992.  I read the book knowing that it was solved now - after all, this book was old, and there was no way that it could still be an unsolved mystery.

I was wrong.

I finished the book Friday night at 1:00 in the morning.  It had made me so paranoid and freaked out (not only was this some wild stuff, but it was true wild stuff, and there are some really bad people in this book!) that I went around closing all the blinds in the house, convinced that the Vietnamese mafia was outside of my house, watching me.  Nevermind that I’m in Idaho, and as far as I know, there is no Vietnamese mafia for hundreds of miles.  I was convinced they had it out for me.

I then jumped online, happy to finally be able to find out “whodunnit.”  I had made myself wait until I finished the book before I looked, because I didn’t want to spoil the surprise by knowing the ending before I got to it.  I was shocked and a little mad that there wasn’t an ending to be found.  Not mad at Lois and her family, but mad the police force for not figuring it out. It’s almost 20 years later, and still no arrested killer? It seemed impossible.

Which is how Lois and her family feel about it too, I’m sure.  Six months after the shooting, on New Year’s Day of 1990, Lois’s husband said, “I thought they would have arrested the murderer by now.”  Little did he know he’d be saying that 19 years later…

You wouldn’t believe everything included in this book: Vietnamese mafia, insurance scams, drug cartels, psychics, frighteningly real (and accurate!) dreams, and the most inept police force you’ll ever meet.  If you asked this police force to add 2 + 2, I have no doubts but that they’d come up with the number 7, and then defend that answer within an inch of their lives.

If you’ve heard of this case before, or if you’ve already read Who Killed My Daughter?, you’ll want to check out the family’s website, Who Killed Kait Arquette? and read through the different links on there.  There are quite a few updates on there, like the fact that part of the inept and stupid police force has been convicted of felonies, and have been exposed as “rogue” cops.  That really doesn’t surprise you after reading the book.

There is also a cool section where you can read and post comments, and Lois Duncan will respond to those comments personally.  I put a comment up on Friday night/Saturday morning, and Lois had already responded to my comment by Sunday afternoon.  She is very on top of that board and responds quickly to each and every comment.

But the coolest part was the excerpts section - apparently, Lois Duncan is writing a sequel called, The Tallykeeper and might publish it also without an answer of “whodunnit.”  If she does, you can be sure that I’ll read it quickly and write up a review for it on here.  The excerpts alone made me breathless and sent my heart racing.

My only real problem with Who Killed My Daughter? was the psychics readings.   I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to that kind of thing, but then again, so has Lois Duncan.  She was sort of dragged into it at first, but by the end, she had become very reliant on what they said.

I didn’t mind that so much (I don’t have to believe something or be thoroughly convinced about its validity in order to enjoy a book) but instead my problem lay in the readings themselves.  Here’s an excerpt from one of the psychic readings:

 There will be this that will show that she will have had some kind of connection to these two suspects and that they know her.  There is something about them which will cause her to recoil as if there will have been some kind of other encounter at another time.  They will seem to have some way to fear that something is known about them by her and thus now by others.  This will seem to put a fear into them they will still be under the containment and control of the questioners and can be asked questions even if there is not fully know the meaning of the questions even by the questioners.

Come again?

Some passages make more sense, and some make less sense.  I found myself skimming the psychic readings after a while, because the stuff like above doesn’t make sense to me.   Perhaps I’m a little slow, I don’t know, but it seems rather convoluted to me.

Other than that, it was one of the most gripping books I have read in a very, very long time.  I simply could not put it down.  I think anyone who has even the slightest interest in true-life murder mysteries should pick this book up.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Good luck, Lois - I hope you find the killer soon.

Havs

I have to confess: I’ve never read a single Nicholas Sparks book. I own the movie The Notebook, and only found out by pure chance a couple of weeks ago that it was based on a Nicholas Sparks book. I had no clue. I check out a lot of Nicholas Sparks books to patrons, and quite frankly, all of the titles just run together in my mind. I had never paid attention to the fact that one of them was named The Notebook. A keen eye for details, I have not.

So why did I read Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks? Well, I was wandering about Barnes and Noble with my husband, and for once, I was waiting for him to finish reading a book before we could go. (Needless to say, it’s usually the other way around). I wandered over to the biography section, and there was Three Weeks With My Brother. I was surprised. I hadn’t realized that Nicholas Sparks had written anything but fiction. I picked the book up and started reading.

And just loved it. I was laughing (quietly, of course - heaven forbid I get kicked out of B&N!) just a few pages in. He has an excellent writing style, which after I thought about it, realized it only made sense. The guy makes his living by writing. If his writing style left something to be desired, I rather think he wouldn’t be on the New York Times Bestseller list regularly.

I can’t testify myself that his fiction writing style is fantastic, but I can his memoir writing style. His parents were unique in their child-raising techniques, to say the least. The following is a little long, but I think captures the childhood of Nicholas and his older brother, Micah, quite well:

On the first day of kindergarten, Mom walked with Micah to the bus stop; from there forward, he walked by himself. Within a week, he told my mom that some older girls, 7th grade or thereabouts but huge to a kindergartener, had cornered him in the junkyard and taken his milk money. Then they threatened him; they said that if he didn’t bring them a nickel every day, they were going to hurt him.

“They said they’re going to beat me up bad,” Micah cried.

There are a number of ways a parent could handle such a situation. My mom could have started walking him to school regularly, for instance, or walked with him one day, confronted the girls, and threatened to call the police if another incident occurred…Not my mom. Instead, after Micah told his story, she rose from the table and…when she returned, she was carrying an old Roy Rogers lunchbox; rusty and dented, it had been her younger brother’s years before.

“We’ll put your lunch in this tomorrow, instead of a brown bag,” she said, and if they try to take your money, just wind up and hit ‘em with it. Like this…”

Cocking her arm like a lion tamer, she began swinging the lunchbox in wide arcs, demonstrating while my brother sat at the table watching.

The next day, my six-year-old brother marched off to school with his hand-me-down lunchbox. And just as they’d threatened, the girls surrounded him when he wouldn’t give them his nickel. When the first one charged, he did exactly as my mom had told him.

In our bedroom that night, Micah related to me what happened.

“I swung with everything I had,” he said.

“Weren’t you scared?”

With his lips pressed together, he nodded. “But I kept swinging and hitting them until they ran away crying.”

The girls, I might add, never bothered him again.
~Page 25 - 26 of Three Weeks With My Brother

Yup, the mother actually showed her son (a kindergartener) how to beat up a group of 7th graders, and more amazingly still, he succeeded.  The parents were big fans of the Tough Love School of Parenting.

They were…relaxed, I guess is the kindest way to put it, in their parenting style. They gave their kids BB guns, which Nicholas (they called him Nicky as a child) and Micah used with wild abandon until the sheriff came and took them away. To console the children, the parents then gave them a bow and arrow set, with real arrows. None of the wussy plastic shafts and bunted tips for them. The kids played with that until (you guessed it) the sheriff came and took that away too. They came a little too close to killing other people one too many times.

So where does the three weeks part come in? Well, in 2002, Nicholas and Micah embark on a trip around in the world, which lasts for three weeks. It’s quite an adventure, and Nicholas always starts the chapter out in present time, and then jumps back in history to their childhood. It is their autobiography, not just a story about those three weeks in 2002. And I do mean “their” - really, it’s an autobiography of the whole Sparks family, with the emphasis on Nicholas and Micah.

I cried hard and laughed a lot too - it is one of the best autobiographies that I have ever read. Even if you’ve never read a lick of Sparks’ writing and have no interest in learning more about him (hmmm…sounds familiar) if you like autobiographies, you’ll love this book. Heck, if you just love a good story, you’ll love this book.

I’m giving it a rare 5 out of 5 stars. Thanks for the amazing book, Nicky. I just might have to read one of your fiction books someday…

Havs

Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys by none other than Dave Barry was a terrific read.  It was an expose on how guys’ minds really work (hint: they don’t) delivered in the classic Dave Barry style.

The book had me smiling by the end of page one, then a little chuckling snuck in.  I soon progressed to giggling, which quickly turned into full blown laughter.  But it didn’t stop there.  Soon (about 10 pages in or so) I was laughing so hard, I was doubled over, struggling to breathe, and wiping tears off my face.

If you don’t laugh when you’re reading this book, you need your pulse taken.  There’s a good chance you’re dead.

Having said all that, there were definitely parts of the book that warrant some warnings.  Dave Barry thinks nothing of including “adult humor” so this isn’t a book I’d hand to a child.  There were some clean and hilarious stories in the book, but there were also some not-so-clean-but-still-hilarious stories in the book. Just be forewarned.

In case some of you have been living under a rock for the past couple of decades and haven’t read any of Dave Barry’s writings, I figured I should put up an excerpt (a clean one, of course) demonstrating Dave’s writing style.  Again, no laughter = dead.  Just wanted to make sure we were clear on that…

Dave talked about medical conditions that only afflict guys: Mainly, Guy Vision (the complete inability to see dirt) and Guy Memory Lapses.  This excerpt is from the Guy Memory Lapses section:

The basic problem here is that guys, as I have noted, devote so much of their brains to remembering vital facts such as who was named MVP of the 1978 Super Bowl, that they cannot always remember minor details, such as they have left an infant on the roof of a car.

You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.  According to a 1992 Boston Globe article, a guy in Massachusetts did this on Mother’s Day.  He had his two children with him, and he was loading them into his car, and he did - give him credit - remember to strap in his twenty-month-old daughter into the car.

But the amount of concentration required for a guy to remember this type of childcare detail can put a lot of strain on his mental equipment, so he went into acute Guy Memory Lapse and forgot that he had placed a car seat containing his three-month-old son on the roof of the car.  As he accelerated onto Interstate 290, he sensed that something was wrong when “he heard a scraping sound on the roof of the car.”

(This is classic guy behavior: He doesn’t notice that he only has 50% of his total children inside the car with him, but he does notice that his car is making a funny sound.)

Anyway, the car was going about 50 mph when the car seat containing the three-month-old boy sailed off the roof and landed on Interstate 290, where - this is strong evidence that God is a guy - the seat skidded safely to a stop, with the boy unhurt.  So, the story has a happy ending, except of course that this particular guy had to tell his wife what happened (Happy Mother’s Day!).  I bet she rolled her eyeballs into the next state.

Perhaps you’re saying, “Dave, aren’t you being unfair?  Aren’t you using purely anecdotal evidence to reinforce an unfortunate gender stereotype about men?  Isn’t it entirely possible that a woman could leave her child on the car roof and drive off?”

No.
~Page 111 - 112

You did laugh, right?  I was a little worried there for a moment…

I hadn’t heard about what was happening with Dave for quite a while, so I decided to do a Google search and see what he’s been up to. Turns out, Dave’s retired from the weekly column business (which is probably why I haven’t heard from him).  Oh, and the Complete Guide to Guys was turned into a movie, which I also didn’t know.

Apparently, I’m not very up-to-date on the latest Dave Barry doings.  Which is sad for me, considering how darn funny I think he is.

I’m giving Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys 4.5 out of 5.  It’s marked down for adult, sometimes crass humor, but overall, it’s just too darn funny to rate lower than that.  Need a pick me up?  Read this book and he’ll have you rolling on the floor with laughter in no time (which, sadly for me, is not an exaggeration).

Hava

When I first read Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich, I wasn’t overly impressed by it, but rather pegged it as a mindless read, good for a summer afternoon at the beach.  It was more of an escapism book than you’d normally find in the nonfiction section, that’s for sure.

I had picked it up because I saw advertisements for the movie 21 (it’s based on the book) and figured it’d be fun to read.  What was surprising to me (although it shouldn’t have been, looking back on it) was the fact that the book is mostly fiction.

First, the plot: Basically, Ben Mezrich meets a guy at a party (Kevin Lewis) who says he has an amazing story to tell, and he wants Ben to tell it in a book.  Ben gets this kind of thing all the time as a writer so he really didn’t expect much, but to humor him, he agreed to listen.

Kevin told him a story that would be unbelievable to the average person: He was recruited as an MIT student, to learn how to count cards and play blackjack.  He was then sent to Las Vegas and other gambling cities to win the backers (the ones supplying the bankroll) the big bucks.  He got a cut of what he made, and became very rich because of this lifestyle.

All of that is actually true.  What’s not true is the embellishments that Ben Mezrich added to make the book more “readable,” as he put it.  In an interview with the Boston Globe, Mezrich said, “Every word on the page isn’t supposed to be fact-checkable.”  He also said, “The idea that the story is true is more important than being able to prove that it’s true.”

That really, no really bugged me.  I read a nonfiction book, expecting it to be *ahem* nonfiction.  I know, a real shocker there.  There was a laundry list of items that were completely made up (click on the link to the interview above if you’re interested) and then a whole other list of items that were exaggerated, changed, and warped in order for the book to be more “readable.”

Ben Mezrich did manage to achieve his goal of being more readable - his book became a New York Times bestseller.  I don’t like the methods used to achieve that goal though. I’ve never been a fan of the saying, “The ends justify the means,” and this was no exception.

I give Bringing Down the House 1.5 out of 5 stars, and I’m putting Ben Mezrich on my blacklist of authors.  I will never pick up one of his books again.  If you’re wanting some real information on Las Vegas, make sure to head on over to my friend’s blog, Living in Las Vegas.  It’s guaranteed 100% nonfiction.

Hava