Book Report: Bonfire of the Vanities

I just finished Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. It took me a couple weeks to get my Krugman post up but I wanted to get through this one is much faster, mostly because I've been reading the book off and on for a few months and I'm sick of it being in my life. Nevertheless, I'm still taking credit for one of my 26 books of 2010 though.

There are a couple reasons this book took so long: it's mammoth (almost 700 pages), the characters are very hard to identify with, and I just can't seem to get into Wolfe's writing style. There are a lot of similarities between the characters in Bonfire and the current mess on Wall Street, which if anything made me like the book less. It would have been better if we had left the Gordon Geckos in the 80's (or Vin Diesel in the Boiler Room?). I also have a dog-eared copy of The Right Stuff that I plan on finishing this year but for the same reason that I decided to read Bonfire: I just want it off my shelf. At least Right Stuff is about some cool historical shit, er, stuff.

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