Book Review: The game: penetrating the secret society of pickup artists By Neil Strauss

Wow, first off -- put your prejudices aside, this book is NOT about picking up women. Though you would probably gain some knowledge by reading it. I read it through for most of this weekend and it was like 450+ pages... if you know me I NEVER read a book this fast -- 'cept maybe Harry Potter. It has VERY good writing and it hooks you effortlessly... sorta like a pick-up artist.

It starts off with one of the main characters, Mystery, (it's non-fiction but the people really do feel like characters) going suicidal and rambling on about the futility of life, and this is after he could bag any women he wanted (at least superficially). The book then stops that vignette and leads you through a whirlwind journey on how exactly they all got to that point. Sounds a little Siddhartha-ey (Buddha) in the way that Mystery reaches this hedonistic zenith and is still not ultimately satisfied, of course we all know he didn't simply gave up all his desires like Siddhartha a-la becoming a Buddhist Monk. Indeed if you keep up with pop-culture you'll recognize this Mystery as the same one on the VH1's reality show, "The Pick-up Artist". So does that mean this book didn't teach that moral? -- well I think it at the very least shows that laying any woman you want isn't going to fulfill everything you want out of life.

And that is what this book is ultimately trying to portray through the eyes of the author, Neil Strauss aka Style. In my opinion this book has two protagonists, Mystery who is very much a tragic character in the vein of Hamlet, and Style, who is much more observant, cool, but he goes through some of the same motions -- he's just chiller about it (or maybe that's cause it's his book). In many ways I relate to both, but the most poignant moment for me came when Mystery was discussing when he really wanted to kill himself in the 10th grade, but the only thing that kept him alive was the thought of Back To The Future II coming out in 23 days. Sometimes we all feel a little hopeless.. especially in love, but it's the hope of these good things in life that keeps us going.

I would love to say more, but that would be ruining it. Some words of caution, it is NOT a low-brow book, the author uses plenty of words I didn't know and had to look up myself, and I consider my vocabulary pretty top-notch. Also some scenes described are pretty graphic i.e. X-rated, but I don't think they're any worse than a similar scene from a romance novel (oh ladies, I know about those), just a little dirtier, cruder... simpler, as is perhaps fitting from a male perspective. Happy reading.