Bruce Jones (4)

This book was a playfully enjoyable romp through such subjects as career, life choices, and love. I started laughing at page two. On about the twentieth page I went and got a pack of sticky notes so I could mark particularly funny passages and share them with my friends. Five pages later I gave up on that because it was distracting me from reading; too many places to stop and stick a note! I identified with main character Nigel so much it made me a bit uncomfortable. I didn’t always like every character in the book, but they were consistently real people that I enjoyed getting to know, and all of them, even the bad guys, had moments of likeability. I got this book for free, and while I enjoyed reading it, I didn’t know that it had elevated itself in my mind as a ‘I will re-read this book’ until yesterday: about to leave for my first day at a new posting in my company, I found myself muttering to myself, “It will be fine. Just suck it and see.” My day did go fine, thankfully in a much more low-key way than Nigel’s days. And living a bit vicariously through Nigel was a worthwhile use of my time during my last free days leading up to it. I look forward to reading more by this author.… (mehr)

A fun, but strange book, enjoyed reading it and laughing. To me it seems to be a coming of age tale about a young man from London trying to be an adult in the Pacific Islands with all the attendant failures, angst, and humor that can be loaded into the plot. Surprisingly, I did not find it overworked, but surprisingly genuine. The British slang, to this American’s ear, was perhaps the strangest part of the novel, after-all we swear differently than those folks. The book is full of exotic situations, locales, and individuals which the author has creatively combined into a fun, laughable, and poignant tale. Recommend highly… (mehr)