Not Ben's best book

I was excited to hear that this book was going to be released having followed the $GME saga on Reddit and Twitter and wondered what Ben Mezrich, author of some books I really enjoyed such as Breaking Vegas, Bringing Down the House and Bitcoin Billionaires, would bring to the story.

My first thought was how this book could be written whilst the story was still unfolding, that was my first red flag, there was clearly a notible event in January 2021 but looking at the stock price through until the books release there has only been more drama, controversy and news that could and should have been included in this book.

I think that being first to put a book like this out, and of course sell the film rights, is one thing and of course the money that will bring but also the opportunity to write a sequel as the story develops.

Anyway what did I think of the book? I didn't like it. It didn't feel like Ben's other books do, to the point where there were several points that I thought "did he even write it?". It picks some "normal" people to follow through their GME journey, I didn't like any of them, not because they're bad people but just the way they're written, Ben includes so much detail setting the scene that it just turned me right off who these people were as characters. They're supposed to represent the everyday retail investors, like me but I just didn't care about their story the way it was written. It annoys me still to be honest, the end of the book kind of forgets about them anyway. An afterthought shoehorned in because there wasn't enough substance otherwise.

Then we come to Ben's description of "key" figures in the story where he tries, unsuccessfully, to be funny. Elon Musk battling AI with a flamethrower, Ken Griffin and his throne of bones, I don't know what the point of this was but it didn't add any humour.

The fact that the book is called the "ANTIsocial network" clearly a play on the fact that Ben has a previous book about Facebook called the Social Network, we get that but the way Reddit is described is as though it's full of trolls, racists, bigots and criminals is far from the mark. People of that type exist, sure but they do on all forms of social media and the way that stood out to me was not of community coming together to share ideas and information but to conspire to corrupt. He may have thought that he was giving an unbiased critique on Reddit as a whole but if Ben spent more than 10 minutes looking for select quotes to prove his thesis I think he would have written this part a lot differently.

I listened to the full book but I wish I hadn't bothered, I'm not dissappointed that it wasn't the story I wanted to hear, like watching the movie Titanic I knew what was going to happen before I listened to it, but the way it was written just wasn't engaging or interesting.

If you know absolutely nothing about the GME story then this might be of some interest but if you listen to it pay Reddit a visit afterwards and make your mind up about the rest of the story after that.

The narrator was good and to be honest that's where this books 2 stars come from, the performance.

3 people found this helpful

More of a pamphlet than a book

Not Ben's best work. Pretty short overall. Liked all his other books in fairness.

1 person found this helpful

Great story and learned a bit as well

Really enjoyed this book.. would recommend even for people who are not interested in finance