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Monday, August 10, 2009

REVIEW for Lost in the Meritocracy




A big thank you goes out to Jess at Random House Canada for kindly, kindly sending me this great little book.



TITLE: Lost in Meritocracy



AUTHOR: Walter Kirn



GENRE: Memoir



RATING: 4 Stars



http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385521284





I have to admit that I starting reading this book, in part because of the absolutely "uppety" book title and the kind of cool book cover. Yeah, I know not great reasons to read a book - but hey! I am thrilled that I picked this one up.



Basically, Walter Kirn has lived and gone to school in a totally different environment than I did. I have always been curious to see what it is like to have been "Ivy Leagued" educated as the closest "higher end" education we have here is McGill University - which has produced, among others, William Shatner - although McGill is well known, it is hardly considered "up there" with the Ivy League.



What I liked about Kirn's book, in part, is that he spends about as much time bragging about his overeducation as he does putting it down - so I never really get a feel as to whether he is proud of it or wishes he had gone to a local college. On the other hand, Kirn confirmed something for me that I long suspected - that school smarts is NOT more important than street smarts.... Kirn does a wonderful job, in this at times, hilarious, poignant somewhat sad novel of in turns putting himself and his life down into the gutter and at times sounding like a real ivy league snob.



Some of his stories are hilarious and some are actually quite judgmental which, I think, fits in very well with the overall tone of the book.



This really is a memoir about a man who has had a long "life" learning curve to finally realize that he isn't that educated "after all".



I loved, loved this book and read it in two sittings - kudos for the author and his honest book.







2 comments:

Wall-to-wall books said...

Hey - I always choose books for those reasons! The title and the cover! You basically don't know if you are going to like the book is till you actually start reading it. Although.... The book I am reading now I would never had chosen based on the title or cover, they are both very deceiving.

bermudaonion said...

I can totally relate because I love the title and the cover, too! I'm glad to see the book lives up to both.

 
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