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Lost At Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries

Jon Ronson

Start date: October 20, 2013

Finish date: October 24, 2013

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Oct 20, 2013 Dolly rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2013, nonfiction, caribbean, england-english, other-usa, france-french, money, education-school, science, south-pole-antarctica

This is an eclectic and humorous collection of articles and stories by Jon Ronson. I'd never heard of him before, but I happened upon this book during a visit to a new library and just had to check it out.

The book is broken up into five sections of types of stories: The Strange Things We're Willing to Believe, High-Flying Lives, Everyday Difficulty, Stepping Over the Line, and Justice. These titles are intriguing, but don't truly convey the absurdity and fascinating range of the topics.

Overall This is an eclectic and humorous collection of articles and stories by Jon Ronson. I'd never heard of him before, but I happened upon this book during a visit to a new library and just had to check it out.

The book is broken up into five sections of types of stories: The Strange Things We're Willing to Believe, High-Flying Lives, Everyday Difficulty, Stepping Over the Line, and Justice. These titles are intriguing, but don't truly convey the absurdity and fascinating range of the topics.

Overall, I found this to be an entertaining book and I loved the length of the stories - they were perfect for my daily busride to work or for a quick read while I ate my lunch. Some of the stories were head scratching, some were humorous, and others were downright heartbreaking. As a group, the stories showed me just how thorough and persistent he was in his journalistic investigations.

After reading the names of the titles of Mr. Ronson's other books (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, The Men Who Stare at Goats, and Them: Adventures with Extremists), I have to admit that I'm intrigued and will have to look for them at my local library.

interesting quotes:

"A strange thing happens when you interview a robot. You feel an urge to be profound: to ask profound questions. I suppose its an interspecies thing. Although if it is I wonder why I never try and be profound around my dog." (p. 25)

"Having an Aston Martin is, I reflect, like having a face made of gold. Some people are awed, others hate you and want to hurt you. And there's nothing you can do to get rid of it. I can't help thinking that an Aston Martin would be a liability for a spy." (p. 72)

"Journalism is storytelling. We wait around for the best bits - the most engaging, extreme, colorful moments - and we stitch them together, ignoring the boring stuff, turning real life into a narrative. Even so, there's shaping a story and there's making things up." (p. 79)

"Now I see why Robbie Williams gets on so well with ghosts. They both only manifest themselves when it suits them." (p. 90)

"My guess is that, since he's spent so much of his life meeting people who aren't as clever as him, the aliens are - intellect-wise - his last-chance saloon." (p. 106)

[Stanley Kubrick] "'Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film,' he says, 'also knows that although it can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.'" (p. 133)

"There are bears everywhere, and moose. I suspect this is why the town is so Republican. There are virtually no liberals. When you've got that many bears, you're not going to be liberal. You know what liberals are like with bears. We just scream. We let out a high-pitched scream and run away, our arms in the air." (p. 144)

[Richard Bandler] "The reason why all my clients are a success is that I killed all the ones who weren't." (p. 221)

new words: moreish ...more

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