Author: Jordan Belfort
Pages: 519
Days to finish: 7
Favourite Lines: “Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.”
“He will be locked up in a room, and we will throw away the room.”
I give this one a big ol’ “Meh”. Yeah, it’s a crazy story. I’ll give him that. It’s probably an entertaining movie. The writing, though, is far from brilliant. Sure, Belfort isn’t a writer by trade and I’m certain his editor had their work cut out for them, but variety is a wonderful thing. I never thought I would have to say that I had read the words “loamy loins” too many times. Also, many of the early conversations in the book felt contrived, by which I mean they just didn’t read naturally. Who talks like that? It’s as if each character took turns at the podium giving a speech.
The parts I did find interesting were about the workings of the stock trade and Belfort’s questionable manipulation of said stocks.
What really rubbed me the wrong way about the whole story was that this is supposed to be the memoir of a recovered drug addict, but the narration comes off as very unapologetic. Basically, he’s bragging. He delights in listing all of the drugs he was on at a given moment and telling the reader about how he should have died many times over.
Meh.
fit in winterpeg 