Toby's review
Bringing Down the House : The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
by Ben Mezrich
Toby's review
Bringing Down the House : The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich
Toby's review
rating:
"Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions" by Ben Mezrich is a nonfiction work that takes a look at a group of MIT graduates and dropouts who develop and perfect a card counting system, which they use to great effect. Specifically, the book concerns Kevin Miller, who is apparently Asian despite the inventive pseudonym, and his involvement with the team of MIT card counters.
As I read this book, I kept flipping back to the frontispiece and wondering, sometimes aloud, why Mezrich has six other titles to his credit. Two of them are pseudonymous, to be fair, so maybe it actually got to the point where editors were asking themselves the same question. Or maybe this guy just won the literary lottery and no one else wanted to write this book.
This literary abortion breaks every rule I’ve established for how to write. He uses adverbs, puts exposition in dialogue, uses cliched similes, and every attempt he makes to “pretty ...more
As I read this book, I kept flipping back to the frontispiece and wondering, sometimes aloud, why Mezrich has six other titles to his credit. Two of them are pseudonymous, to be fair, so maybe it actually got to the point where editors were asking themselves the same question. Or maybe this guy just won the literary lottery and no one else wanted to write this book.
This literary abortion breaks every rule I’ve established for how to write. He uses adverbs, puts exposition in dialogue, uses cliched similes, and every attempt he makes to “pretty ...more
