Book Review: The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson

I picked up 'The Men Who Stare At Goats' mostly because I was somewhat disappointed by the the movie. However, the book turned out to be rather more disappointing than the movie itself. It did start out interesting, with a lot of promise but Ronson changed track so often in the narrative that the book read more like a collection of blog posts than an actual steady narrative.

What is irritating is that the author himself features prominently in several parts of the stories (several tracts in the book are conversations between Ronson and certain principal characters); however, unlike Saadat Hasan Manto who employed the same technique in the fabulous 'Stars from another sky', Ronson is an incredibly vacuous character. Hence the ploy mostly misfires.

The only reason I liked the book somewhat is because of the wealth of interesting information the book had. In the hands of a better author, this book would have been a masterpiece. 

Ronson, however, destroys what was clearly journalistic gold with his amateurish writing.