Book Review: The Bro Code by Matt Kuhn

One of the many attempts to cash in on HIMYM mania, The Bro Code shouldn't be read unless you get it as a PDF for free in your mail box like I did a few years back. Sucker that I am, I still bought the paperback and was thus, thoroughly disappointed.

The Bro Code is really a long blog post and not a book. You can read it in thirty minutes... and eventually the overuse of the word 'Bro' in everything is sure to get on your nerves.

I read it with another book at the same time (Reluctant Fundamentalist), that's why I managed to tolerate it. Read alone, the book is probably worse.

Book Review: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

As I read Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects, which I admittedly purchased only because I had been shaken by the Gone Girl movie and the fact that it was on a decently hefty discount on Amazon, I was reminded of a 90's author who wrote dark, often disgusting books - books that you could not turn your gaze away from, even as you read while growing increasingly disgusted. Chuck Palahniuk.

Flynn is more refined in her storytelling - her 'unreliable narrators' start off as reliable, balanced, put together people with average American lives (in both Gone Girl and Sharp Objects) - yet the darkness that follows reminded me of Palahniuk's characters.

A very interesting read - and I wonder if Flynn will agree that her writing is Palahniuk inspired. Or maybe I am drawing a comparison simply because they broadly use the same narratorial technique. The only reason this is a three and not a four star, is because I had broadly guessed the ending and half the fun of reading a thriller is in the climax.

Dark and interesting nevertheless.