We’ll talk more about metrics during the Q1 report I post next week, but one of my key metrics for the year is the number of books I read. Somewhat related to this, I recently noticed that it’s been an embarrassingly long time since I’ve tried to read an entire book on a plane, so on a recent trip to Tucson I decided to finally try it again. I’ve had Bringing Down the House sitting on my shelf at work for the past year and decided on a last minute impulse to chuck it in my bag before heading to the airport. Here are some general impressions of the book:
- It’s written at about an eighth grade reading level. Author Ben Mezrich is apparently a Harvard grad, but there are passages of this book that struck me as surprisingly bush league: an awkward metaphor here, an overly earnest description or unimportant detail there. I found myself consistently having to stop and wonder, “Who edited this? Ronald McDonald?”
- This book is supposedly a true story — one is led to believe that not even the names were changed, though my guess is that they had to have been — and yet given how fashionable it is to elaborate on the truth these days (I’m looking at you, James Frey) I couldn’t help realizing what a falsehood most of these memoir-ish books have to be. In the case of Bringing Down the House, there are scenes, dialogue and even plot points that are just a little too convenient. The book unfolds suspiciously like the perfect blueprint for a movie, which — congrats! — it looks like they’ve ended up making.
- It’s so fashionable to time travel in your narrative these days, but I found the book’s device of jumping between the main character’s rise to fame and the present-day interviews (with the author actually inserting himself into the story) overly clunky.
- The motivations of the characters aren’t particularly well-drawn; I wasn’t entirely certain why several of the characters would want to continue playing blackjack in spite of their difficulties once they’d been profiled.
- Even with a book written at the eighth-grade level, I read ridiculously slowly. I estimate this book took me about four and a half hours total, which is probably at least two hours longer than it should have.
Despite all these gripes, it’s a compulsive read — by the end of it I actually wished I’d gone to MIT (or lived in Vegas) myself. Also, despite freely giving away some blackjack secrets I’d wager this book probably ended up doing Vegas a net positive, encouraging people to throw even more money down at the blackjack tables. And I’m actually really curious to see 21 now, the movie adaptation starring Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth. Because nothing says MIT to me like Kate Bosworth.