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Sep 09, 2011

Jessica rated it:

This book seems boring and shallow, and reading it gives me an anesthetized, hollow, detached feeling that I would not describe as entirely pleasant.

And yet I cannot seem to stop, and whenever I have to, I become very anxious to return to it as quickly as I can. Its appeal is no less powerful for being difficult to pinpoint or explain.

This experience reminds me of something, but I'm not sure what.... Oh yeah, I know: Bright Lights, Big City. Way better, though, so far. I More...

10 comments like (36 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2008

RatsRGods rated it:

Rich kids doing drugs. Ugh.
Actually, my view of this book was kind of distorted by this man I used to work with at this coffee shop.
He was a huge fan if this author. And he was also a writer himself (published in Hustler!). He was in his 40's and still trying to break out. He had a son that was autistic and had tons of medical bills but because he still wanted to be a struggling artist his family had to suffer.
So, he gives me the manuscript of one of his books (that was rej More...

12 comments like (22 people liked it)

Aug 04, 2010

Krok Zero rated it:

Last year I spent a few months as an intern for a major national arts publication, which shall remain nameless because that makes me look cooler than if I just blurted it out. I had a few regular duties at this (unpaid) gig, the primary one being transcription of interviews. You might think that transcribing is drudgery, and in a sense it is. But if the interview subject was interesting—and, given this publication's bent and cachet, most of the subjects were interesting—it provided a rare glimps More...

7 comments like (32 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2011

Kathryn rated it:

Books of this nature age well with me. I keep thinking about what happened, what Ellis might have meant. I find it fascinating what people walk away with from this and American Psycho. It seems rather obvious to me that this book is not just about spoiled rich drug addicts wasting away while taking some of their world with them. The characters' actions, more specifically their lack of action, says so much for the state of the times in this book, for LA, for American culture, all of which I find More...

2 comments like (16 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Derek rated it:

Why should I care about Bret Easton Ellis' characters if he doesn't care about them? The aptly titled Less Than Zero didn't bother to go into the character's inner-dialogue any more than it bothered to show a character that anyone might care about. Sure, the things they do (random sex, drug abuse, etc) make great fodder for fiction, but if there's no counterweight of compassion, what do I care if they fuck up their lives?

I get it: they're emotionally vacant and aimless because of the More...

3 comments like (11 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Joe rated it:

One question before we start, "Anthracite?"

Less than Zero is a meditation on the soul-less, physically obsessed world that was born in the 1980s. Yes, perhaps the pedulum has swung to and fro since the publication, but I find the relevance striking to today's pop-culture aesthetic. If Easton Ellis was writing this story today, which his website says he is working on a sequel!?! TECHNOLOGY would or will seperate the characters even more. The Internet is the most convenien More...

5 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 30, 2008

Ricky rated it:

Okay, so I was willing to accept this book as a criticism of the emptiness of modern culture. I was willing to overlook the dullness and amateurishness. But it just got duller and duller and duller. And yes, we know American culture is a wasteland. But there has to be a more interesting way to get this across. And if I am to accept this book as metaphor, I'm going to have to disagree with its premise because I think it's cynical to the point of inaccuracy. It was like a Wes Anderson movie: More...

18 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2011

Mari rated it:

After reading a lot of reviews of this book it appears that you either like the book or hate it. Yes there are a lot of kids with more money than they know what to do with but you can find more to the story.

This book is about a guy named Clay. He's become emotionally numb in order to accepted in his society.

He is surrounded by his peers (I don't use the word friends since it would mean he has some feelings towards them) who have no moral bounds and act only on their own More...

5 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 19, 2011

Shadazz rated it:

When I read the story of Clay Whats-his-last-name and his L.A. buddies I think of The Great Gatsby. No surprise because they are both a sort of satirical, depiction of lifestyles decades apart; yet somehow similar. This would be a very general likeness, I could go on talking about the common elemets the two books have for me: the importance of billboards and their text or images (Elvis billboard and Dr. Don't-remember-his-name with the big eyes billboard); the detachment of the narrator; Running More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 28, 2009

Evan rated it:

So far I don't think I'm learning very much about the privileged youth class of LA in the 1980s, but it reads like a breeze. Clay, I'm sure, has been compared to Holden Caufield, and the book's blase ironic tone matches. No great shakes maybe, despite its fame, but I can only say I wish I could write something as good.

So drugs and casual sex and ennui---always with the image industry of Hollywood touching all---lit in the bright So-Cal noir sun.

Not much changed essential More...

5 comments like

Jul 12, 2010

Jasmine rated it:

azooooooom!

Okay I am giving this book five stars for the exact opposite reason I gave amphibian five stars. This book is everything that I want from a book. Moral bankruptcy, intense boredom, and of course a good dose of spoiled rich kids. Although I have to say that Clay is clearly a device being used to stop you from becoming too angry with the books inherent moral bankruptcy, after all the main character is disgusted too, not that he intends to do anything about it but hell at le More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 22, 2008

Ailsa rated it:

This book probably deserved more than three stars. But I just can't give it any more than that. I HATE this book. I hate it with my whole soul. It's so true and I am massively depressed after reading it. It perfectly illustrates the life of a completely useless waste of a human being and all his useless friends and their useless lives. It's awful. They should all be put out of their (and our) misery. The best thing I can say is that this book serves as a glorious example of how not to be. The sc More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Nov 03, 2008

GillyP rated it:

Bret Easton Ellis documents the life of Clay, eighteen years old, back home in LA for the holidays from his New England college. Clay does little. He moves in a daze, from bedroom to pool to parties and tense family dinners, watching the lives of his family and friends – mostly fellow teens with no direction, too much money and too much freedom – their parents all divorced and mostly absent.

The style is choppy- deliberately so – as Clay’s thoughts and feelings grasshopper through ob More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 10, 2008

Jonathan rated it:

This was a very bleak novel about a group of morally bankrupt people living in L.A. during the eighties. The protagonist, Clay, comes back to California from his New Hampshire college for summer break. The novel focuses on his interaction with his old friends and his family.

There seems to be no limit to the emptiness and depravity of the characters in this novel. Ellis seems to keep you just on the verge of feeling compassion for Clay, but Clay's behavior and the choices he makes ke More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 02, 2008

Evil_Dead_Junkie rated it:

Read when I first moved to LA, and it more or less summed up my feelings about the place in other words a stripmall that got cancer where your soul gets a general anesthetic while it rots.

Reread a year and a half later, it no longer has quite the same effect which either means I've become my soul is rotting right on schedule, or that well I don't know what the second option would be.

The fact is that while Bret's minimalist prose is still very impressive, the story of a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 08, 2009

Jeff rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2008

Thomas rated it:

I re-read this while in L.A. late summer 2007, and I was surprised how much power it still possesses. It was such a comforting hollow to crawl into when I found it in 1986, and I suppose I liked it for many of the same reasons that made it a classic, at least for the unfortunately tagged Generation X.

Revisiting the novel, though, was a blast, largely because it was nothing like I remembered. That God-awful film of it, starring Robert Downey Jr. and my then-heartthrob Andrew McCarthy, h More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2007

Saxon rated it:

This book is empty. Void of characters who are really distinguishable. Void of any lengthy sentences or description. Void of much emotion. And it works really well for this story.
Taking place in the early 80's in LA, Ellis employs a simplicity that lacks of depth and heavy description which perfectly coincides with the emptiness of the characters, the setting and the lifestyles they lead. The end result is a novel that is subtely errie and grostesque and makes you really glad you aren't r More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 21, 2007

Sean rated it:

i've only read this and "The Rules of Attraction" - way back in the late '80s, when they first came out. lurid, pulpy and fun, fast reading indeed. but ultimately i walked away feeling like they were disposable, empty calorie novels. and have never been compelled to read more. for the most part. i struggled with the (atavistic?) notion that having no point is the point. (drugs, sex, vanity, shame = rinse, repeat.) other authors have done it better.

funny though. he does seem More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2008

Jason rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 11, 2007

Cheri rated it:

I remember reading this book when it came out and trying to figure out who the characters were. I am younger than Ellis by quite a bit, but there was a certain girl who was the older sister of a friend, who was supposed to be the template for one of the characters in the novel. That was probably the most interesting part of reading the book.

Knowing that several passages in the book are actually rip offs of Joan Didion's work, really gives you a whole other reason to loathe it outsi More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2007

Ryan rated it:

Bret Easton Ellis is one of my favorite authors of all time.

"Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation".

This book contains my favorite exchange between any two characters in any book I have read.

"Where are we going?" I asked
"I don't know," he said. "Just driving."
"But this road doesn't go anywhere," I told him.
"T More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 25, 2011

Sergei_kalinin rated it:

Наткнулся на эту книгу в подборке под названием "Интеллектуальная литература"... мда... интеллектом в ней и не пахнет :((((

Начал читать, еле-еле осилил страниц 50. Зарисовки из жизни американской "золотой молодежи" изложенные в "документальном стиле": "я, одетый в (название бренда), пошел на тусовку к ней/нему (очень схематичное описание внешности и вновь одёжного бренда; характеры героев не отображены вовсе никак), послушал музыку (название группы) More...

0 comments like

Jan 20, 2012

Anne Nikoline rated it:

I just finished Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. On the back of the book, there is an author's note saying: "This is the book your parents warned you about. Jim Morrison would be proud." this I believe sums up the novel very well, because of the the many comparison to the cult television series, Gossip Girls with all its drama, scandals and disastrously lives of teenager gone completely bad.

I am not quite sure if I will ever read this again because there was a few times More...

0 comments like

Jan 18, 2012

Jacob rated it:

Less than zero by Bret Easten Ellis is a story of a boy named Clay. Clay is 18 years old and came to visit his home town of L.A. for his winter break from Camden College.

The beginning of the book starts off somewhat confusing as in it jumps right into the story and have to catch up into what is happening. He gets picked up at the airport from his girlfriend Blair. On the car ride to his house they go on a rant about how people cant drive in L.A. .

Clay meets up with More...

0 comments like

Jan 16, 2012

Roxie rated it:

This book would be a good gift to give to someone who you know who never shuts the hell up and tells these really long ass winded stories that never seem to end and are the dullest mundane thing you've ever heard maybe they would take a hint. This book reads like that, like one long story where someone did this and this then we did that then she said this and then he did that and did you hear what he did to her etc. People say there is a deeper meaning to the book and its a metaphor and all that More...

0 comments like

Dec 09, 2011

Claude rated it:

Same old shit from an author who only has two subjects. Some reviewers would call this book a great pastiche of post-modern society. I would call it the bitching and whining of a gay male author. A lot of gay males find it hard to believe that not all the world is as superficial and as ephemeral as there lives are; a great deal of civilisation is not preoccupied with the trivial shit that is portrayed in Ellis's books as omnipresent.
Consumerism, identity, lack of empathy: Ellis just recycl More...

0 comments like

Oct 25, 2011

Gaurav rated it:

I just finished Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. Most people are familiar with his more popular work: American Psycho. Less Than Zero is my first exposure to his writing and I have to say I instantly fell in love with his writing style.

That being said, I’m not really sure why I care about any of the characters in this book. They’re the most vacuous and empty characters I’ve ever been introduced to via the page. The book is filled with young blonde-haired fair skinned surfer boys. More...

0 comments like

Oct 17, 2011

Eddie rated it:

Damn, fool! If this story were one of those pinche Aesop fables then the moral of the story would be that rich white kids got problems, too!

And by problems, I ain't talking about the usual stuff like the time I was put in jail for graffiting my homegirl's name across the Whataburger on Alameda(bitch, how was I supposed to know Eddie + Lucero didn't equal LUV 4 EVA?). Nah fool. The kids in this book are more into the coca-eeena and the late night drives and the thumpin' music and the More...

0 comments like

Oct 16, 2011

Guillermo rated it:

Less Than Zero is a terribly chilling book about the woe-is-me white upper class college-aged kids, spending their time partying, snorting coke and whoring themselves out. And the way Bret Easton Ellis tells it, well, it's damn right poetic.

Clay returns home for Christmas break. After spending the last four months in New Hampshire, Los Angeles seems foreign to him. Even worse, the people he knew are less friends than they are strangers. Oblivious ex-girlfriend picks up where their rel More...

0 comments like