Videorecensione: https://youtu.be/Gf87It-R--c

Took me just about all semester to read (because I was busy). The kaleidoscopic narrative lent itself well to thay though— a fun read but pretty depressing too sometimes. I like any book that mentions REM.

At first glance, this book is pointless. It's an endless loop of drugs, sex, and parties. It has no plot, it begins and ends in the middle of a sentence, there are too many characters strewn about, too many labels, too many songs, too many places. You finish the book and for a moment you think 'wait - what? That's it?' but you realize yes, that is, in fact, 'it'. The apathy Ellis invokes in his readers, shows in his characters, is still masterfully done. He breezes past topics like suicide and abortion which, when you give the way they're treated some thought, make you sick. His narrative choices may seem haphazard with the shifting first person perspective, the shifting tenses (AND THE RANDOM PASSAGE IN FRENCH WHICH I STILL CANNOT UNDERSTAND AFTER GOOGLE TRANSLATE), but it allows him to show how self absorbed his characters are and how differently they view the same things, the same people. He slips in little clues that tie in with events that are mentioned in passing and if you're paying attention to seemingly random paragraphs and details, you get a greater sense of what Ellis is trying to get across to the reader. I am constantly left wanting to read more of his work.

'The Rules of Attraction' is a dark satire that follows the lives of hedonistic and unsympathetic college students. Centred around an unusual love triangle between its three protagonists, the novel is a multi-perspective tale that depicts different forms of desperation and abrasiveness. Packed with page-turning scandal and sharp narration, the book is a strangely intoxicating read that quickly moves from sensational events to bizarre tragedies. Overall, this novel largely portrays the world as a dog-eat-dog environment, and implies that the idea of being loved and cared about by your peers is totally daft.

2.5 stars. It wasn't terrible but I couldn't get invested in the story or characters, nothing about it was able to grab me but might reread this on a later date as I have the physical version

The biggest problem with The Rules of Attraction is that it's essentially a carbon copy of Ellis' debut novel Less Than Zero. It follows a large cast of college kids who are all either gay or lesbian or bisexual (because apparently straight people don't go to college?), who have sex with anything that moves, who smoke cigarettes and do cocaine a dozen times a page, and who wander around aimlessly, failing all of their classes and going to mindless parties all the time. They're all generally just big wastes of carbon atoms who treat life as if it's meaningless and who act like complete deadweights and burdens on everyone around them.

The thing about Ellis' "college kid" books is that you may enjoy the first one, but because they're just lazy pointless clones of each other, you'll almost definitely like each one that follows less and less, and that's what we have here. I liked Less Than Zero, but this is literally just a clone of it with different but equally one-dimensional and forgettable characters. My advice is to pass on this one.

It was interesting that Clay from Less Than Zero and Patrick Bateman from American Psycho had cameos in this one, but those still don't remotely make this worth reading.

Manic and not very likeable. It follows the love (though that is hardly the word) lives of a group of students at a New England university in 1985. It opens mid sentence and unfolds in frantic chunks, focusing on different characters. It's certainly frank about sex and drugs etc, but it's not as funny as it seems to think; my overriding impression is that of a precocious child trying to shock - so what? Still, an interesting contrast to the exaggerated naïveté of Starter for Ten A Novel.

In Ellis' defence, he does warn you. It opens with a Tim O'Brien quote which sums it up very well: "The facts, even when beaded on a chain, still did not have real order. Events did not flow. The facts were separate and haphazard and random even as they happened, episodic, broken, no smooth transitions, no sense of unfolding from prior events."

Der 2. Roman von BEE nach "Unter Null". Hier bekommt man ein üppiges Collegestudentenleben mit Partys, Sex und Drogen Mitte 80-er. Ein bisschen "Unter Null"-Vibes. Nur war "Unter Null" frischer, krasser und schonungsloser.

Unter ganz viel Personal, das entweder blau oder zugedröhnt (oder auch beides) ist, und wo jeder mit jedem getrieben hat, könnte man im Endeffekt 3 Figuren herauskristallisieren, aus dem Blickwinkel derer wir dieses Leben beobachten dürfen.

Da ist Paul, der in Mitchell verliebt ist. Michelle geht aber mit Susan aus. Und so lässt sich Paul auf die Bezieung mit Sean ein. Sean ist Bruder von Patrick Bateman. Sean steht total auf Lauren, mit der er später auch so eine Art wie Beziehung hat. Lauren vermisst Viktor, der sich in Europa treibt und sie nicht zurückruft. Sie hält die Einsamkeit nicht aus und lässt sich auf eine Affäre mit einem Erstsemestler ein, dann auf die mit dem Freund ihrer Freundin, dann auf die Beziehung mit Sean...

Ja, ich konnte selbst irgendwann nicht mehr durchblicken, wer mit wem. Es ist aber auch irrelevant, denn man ist gewohnt,  dass BEE unter ganzem Sodom und Gomorra andere Themen versteckt. Hier geht es wieder um die tiefe Einsamkeit, Sehnsucht nach Liebe, gleichzeitig um die Angst vor der Bindung, der Zukunft und die  Unwissenheit, was diese betrifft. Es geht auch um Selbstfindung/-verständnis: Was will man? Wer ist man? Wer will man sein? Man hält sich jedoch nicht mit der Suche nach den Antworten auf. Man zieht lieber einen Pot und man geht zu einer Bums-Klamotten-Party, um wenigstens für eine Nacht (oder paar Stunden) nicht alleine zu sein.

Wie ich schon erwähnt habe, fand ich "Unter Null" stärker. Nichtsdestotrotz ist dieses Buch für BEE-Fans ein Muss. Und ja, Clay und Patrick tauchen auch hier kurz auf:)

Η νόμοι της έλξης, μάλλον η αναρχία του έρωτα, σεξ και της ματαιοδοξίας. Ένα μάτσο εύποροι φοιτητές σχολής καλών τεχνών, ματαιόδοξοι χωρίς μέτρο, περνούν τον καιρό τους ξεπερνώντας τα κοινωνικώς αποδεκτά όρια: παίρνουν ναρκωτικά, αλλάζουν συνεχώς συντρόφους (ακόμα και μεταξύ του ιδίου φύλλου), αδιαφορούν για το μέλλον τους, τις σπουδές τους, τα συναισθήματα των άλλων, πίνουν και φλερτάρουν με το θάνατο. Το δεύτερο βιβλίο του Έλλις, συνεχίζει από εκεί που τελείωσε το "Less than zero" (χωρίς να είναι "σίκουελ") είναι ένας ακόμα ύμνος στην ματαιοδοξία, ασύνδετο, χωρίς σαφή πλοκή, μοιάζει περισσότερο σαν ένα συνονθύλευμα εμπειριών (του συγγραφέα; ποιος ξέρει;) χωρίς αρχή και τέλος. Ιδιαίτερα προκλητικό βιβλίο, ίσως όχι για όλους αλλά πιστεύω ότι όσοι τολμήσουν ίσως εκτιμήσουν την δική τους ζωή περισσότερο.

Dressed to get screwed blir tema på bursdagen min neste år

3.0 Stars
I have come to realize that this author has a specific kind of story he likes to write. This is another novel about unlikeable young people doing drugs and sleeping around. This one had good parts but it didn't fully hold my interest.

Depressing and unsettling. Literally made me nauseous to read. The characters were selfish, unappealing, & generally bad people. I do understand why some people say this book is a comedy based on the complete idiocy of the characters, but it really is a very sad book overall. I guess the only thing I can say I enjoyed about it was that it made me that much more grateful for my own life after reading how awful these people were. "American Psycho" used to be on my list of books to read, but I don't think I could stomach anything more by Easton Ellis.