In nearly every article of the book, journalist Jon Ronson is able to pick an extraordinary subject to write about in an interesting and engaging way. I loved reading about real life “superhero” Phoenix Jones as he patrols the streets of Chicago, trying to make drunk drivers eat tacos before getting behind the wheel, or discovering that the rap duo Insane Clown Posse have been covert Christians their entire careers, believing they were making converts of their listeners subliminally for 20 years More...

SIX STARS, I say. SIX STARS for Jon Ronson!

I'm always amazed by Jon Ronson's style. He is witty, self-depreciating and observant. This collection of non-fiction stories takes a look at both those on the fringe of society (other-worldly Indigo children, psychics, robot-enthusiasts, and Jesus Christian cults) as well as issues that affect more ordinary people (like the economic collapse, unequal taxation as well as crime and punishment). I've been told that the many of the short stories in this co More...

As reviewed at Bookendbabes.com:


Lost At Sea, by Jon Ronson, reviewed by Leslie Langtry

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Leslie Langtry


I want to be Jon Ronson, Intrepid British Reporter. I want to ironically interview the Insane Clown Posse, question a creepy lifelike robot (without throwing up – something I would certainly do), or drive from England to Switzerland doing and eating and drinking exactly what James Bond did on the same trip without dying from many, many things.

But I would suck at it. W More...

In Lost At Sea, Ronson writes quite the subversive work. It can easily be passed off as a series of unconnected essays about random interviews with odd people, until you realize the underlying theme that makes up the soul of Ronson's encounters. This book is about searching, about longing, about looking for answers or respect or freedom. Lost At Sea touches on the ultimate prize--happiness--and how elusive and fleeting it is for all of us.

It also discusses insane clowns that have formed a posse More...

Jon Ronson almost always pulls off a tone I like - sympathetic and humanistic towards people who are honestly a bit riciulous or crazy - but sometimes his material feels underwhelming because he's interested in stories that seem a bit trivial. This collection of articles and essays is very much a piece with his other works, then, because of it's tone and the type of stories that it tells. (Although it should be pointed out that some of the economic stories are more serious than any of his other More...

Lost At Sea / 9781594631375

I read this book because it was selected for our book club, and I am terribly disappointed with it. I don't recommend this book at any price, for I found it to be very poorly researched and (more importantly) to put forth some really contemptible ideas about marginalized people and victims of abuse.

I initially thought this book to be a collection of journalistic articles on various interesting and zany topics, but I found the "journalism" part to be very lacking. In a More...

When I saw that this book opens with Ronson's Insane Clown Posse interview (which is one of my favorite things ever), I was afraid it would be downhill from there. To some extent, that turned out to be true--the ICP interview is still probably my favorite piece--but for the most part it's a pretty gentle descent. Some articles are better than others, but they're all good and a few are very good. Unlike Ronson's previous books of (if I remember Jon Stewart's phrase correctly) "satirical investiga More...

Jon Ronson writes for the Guardian UK, and this is a collection of articles from his works. It’s his third collection of such articles, and while the first two are more about himself, this one picks up the thread in his earlier work Them: Adventures with Extremists. He also wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats, and The Psychopath Test.

I read The Psychopath Test based solely on Ronson’s interview on The Daily Show, and picked up Lost at Sea for the same reason. I saw the film version of The Men Who S More...

Ronson has a good eye for bizarre nonfiction investigation. He writes about assisted suicide practitioners, people preparing for alien visits, robots with artificial intelligence, a high school mass murder plot in North Pole, Alaska, a Christmas themed town, and a person's mysterious disappearance from a Disney cruise ship. Each chapter is a captivating subject, and together they paint a picture of the strange world we live in. So I read with interest.

That said, I found many chapters to be thin More...

The topics that Jon Ronson chooses for his pieces are always fascinating,and the people he profiles represent very interesting human stories that one does not encounter regularly. His writing style is tinged with humor, despite the fact that what he's writing about is often strange or sad, which does the job of keeping it from getting too depressing without being disrespectful (well, at least from the point of view of most readers--some of his subjects might disagree).

At times, though, some of t More...

Firstly, I have to say that the reason I docked a star is because of the organization, not the content itself. As someone who isn't a well-established reporter, the chances of me getting around to all the places Ronson visits is somewhere between Never Going to Happen and In Your Dreams. So as far as the content goes, it's interesting material and if you like nonfiction about interesting microfactions of people, this book is totally worth your time.

Unfortunately, the presentation is a mishmash. More...

Ronson is that rare journalist who transcends his usual medium (The Guardian) to become something greater: a fantastic narrative non-fiction writer. In this book, he departs from his usual format of longer investigative pieces to present a collection of his best satirical and self-deprecating works. Each of his subjects may live crazy lives, but Ronson is a master at finding the humanity in every uncanny circumstance. Highlights include an interview of the rap duo known as the Insane Clown Posse More...

In this collection, mostly consisting of articles he wrote for The Guardian, journalist Jon Ronson investigates many things a lot of us have wondered about, as well as some things we never even thought to wonder about. A short list includes celebrity psychics, credit card offers, Juggalos, Stanley Kubrick's house, Indigo children, AI robotics, NLP, and people who go missing from cruise ships.
The chapters are brief, just long enough to skim the surface of the topic at hand, but Ronson asks his i More...

This is a collection of Jon Ronson articles from the Guardian. If you've never seen or read his stuff think Louis Theroux without the impeccable social skills. Ronson interviews strange people or gets involved in odd situations then recounts the experience as long-form anecdotes; not exactly journalism but more of an insight into the individuals that comprise subcultures and marginalized groups.

Being as this is a collection of shorter pieces, there's not really a larger picture to comment on her More...

Jon Ronson truly has a gift for captivating an audience. He takes us into worlds where our first intuition is to ask, "What is wrong with these people? How can they talk themselves into this?" But he sensitively and compassionately explains the situations.

Yes, there's some snark (which I enjoy). But Ronson truly is a journalist. He doesn't gawk; he describes a facet of humanity which connects us all. At the beginning of each situation we're outsiders looking at the fringe of society, but they gr More...

interesting because this is so not my normal type of book to read, but i found it extremely amusing, interesting, well written and fantastic.

i listened to this on audiobook, and Jon Ronson read it himself...which was fantastic. his dry manner of narrating even the most humorous portions of this book made it all the better to listen to.

while i enjoyed this entire book, there are some standout gems of stories that i listened to two times, just because the were so great. Ronson recreating Bond's t More...

Jon Ronson is a miracle of modern journalism & essay authorship. He combines a pop-cultural sensibility, extreme empathy, self-awareness, psychology, sociology, and so many unrelated and semi-related skills and with a complete mastery of his own voice in a way that makes the world more fascinating in every little way when viewed through his eyes. He has an ability to arrive at the perfect truth of a situation without the experiential maximalism that David Forster Wallace used to similar, if More...

3.5 stars. This is a collection of Jon Ronson's, author of "The Psychopath Test" journalism, often published in the British Guardian. I found that the pieces were often hit-or-miss for me, not really because of the quality of the writing, necessarily, but because I wasn't as interested in some of the subjects as I was others. I must say that I am grateful to Ronson for doing a fabulous job exploring and humanizing some of the odder pieces of our society. I particularly enjoyed his essays on subj More...

A collection of articles by Jon Ronson, mostly works that have already appeared in The Guardian. But since I don't read The Guardian, it was all new to me.

For me, the appeal of Jon Ronson is that he is so credulous. As you read, you can feel him try to step into his subjects' shoes, trying hard to understand their (often strange) points of view. There always seems to be at least one moment where he does believe fully. Ronson also seems to genuinely like his subjects, at least at first.

Some gems More...

Growing up, my dad taught me many important lessons. They included things like vitamin-popping, punctuality, and the lesson he reiterated the most: “Katie, people aren’t rational. Remember that.” Bestselling author Jon Ronson and my father are of the same mind. In Lost at Sea, Ronson takes us on a journey through the weirdness, superstition, and delusions that consume “ordinary” people. The book traverses the outer reaches of normality in outer reaches of the globe: North Pole, Alaska, chateaus More...

I got this book as an ARC (an advance copy from the publisher).

This book is a collection of Jon Ronson's articles for the Guardian, and I'm really glad they put this compilation out. It's very funny and at times also very poignant. I definitely recommend it, as each article is fascinating- whether he's dealing with a minister who helps people kill themselves to a religious group who donates their kidneys to strangers. I couldn't put the book down, and kept pulling it out (even at family functio More...

Ronson is a witty writer whose articles in this book seem to fall into two camps: those where he plays a journalist watching from the background, present in the narrative only as much as necessary to explain how he knows what he relates, and those where his thoughts and reactions are an integral part of the story. The latter tend to get a little too self-aware and cutesy for my taste, but there are some gems among the former camp. In particular, Blood Sacrifice, "I Make It Look Like They Died in More...

Much of this journalism collection I read when the pieces were originally published, some more in my mum's copy of the collection at Christmas, and I've just polished off the rest in a library copy. Except that some pieces I read on two (or in one case three) of those occasions, because Ronson at his best is that good. Yes, gonzo journalism is now mainstream, but when Ronson situates himself in the story, he does so not as some gung-ho parody of Hunter, not as a faux-everyman, but as *himself*, More...

Jon Ronson’s Lost at Sea is a wild romp through through some of the more bizarre sides of humanity. In this collection of articles and essays, Ronson details the sometimes quirky, sometimes crazy, ‘mysteries’ he solves as an investigative journalist. His topics run the gamut from financial fiascoes to religious extremism to artificial intelligence. He interviews a wide array of personalities--most of whom dwell on the fringes of normalcy--and manages to treat (most of) them with a type of dignit More...

This is a collection of articles written by Jon Ronson, all focussed on weird - and sometimes wonderful - people or situations. Of his other books, I've only previously read 'The Psychopath Test'.

What I really like about Ronson's books is that he deals with some pretty weighty material, but handles it with such a light hand that you find yourself laughing at the absurdity of what he's describing. You'll then suddenly read a sentence that either brings home the seriousness of what he's talking a More...

This "book" was really hard work.

It's hard to describe it really - which is why I've questioned the word "book".

For want of a better description, Jon Ronson is an investigative journalist - and what he's given us here appears to be a mish mash of magazine articles, preliminary treatments for TV programmes, short stories, semi structured notes and...in the main, completely unstructured musings - again, I'm looking for better (probably slightly more acerbic) words here.

Let's start with the positiv More...

I listened to this on audiobook. I really wish it wasn't narrated by the author. I don't know if it is his accent or just the manner in which he speaks, but his narration of this book just didn't appeal to me.
I had problems getting into this book at the start. After the first few chapters, I was wondering what the theme of this book was. I was expecting all these different stories he was telling, to somehow tie in together. They don't. And there really is no theme either. Each chapter covers a t More...

I have seen Jon Ronson on the daily show twice, and both times I ended up reading the book he was there to sell. The first was The Psychopath Test, and this is second. I think this is a testament to his considerable charm. And I think he really must be charming in person too, because there is no other explanation for the way he manages to get so many people from all walks of life talk to him and tell him intimate details about themselves. He likes to talk about what a generally anxious person he More...