Out of the Ordinary: True Tales of Everyday Craziness
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Out of the Ordinary: True Tales of Everyday Craziness for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Times Literary Supplement
Ronson plays up to his charming buffoonery...But he is an acute
social commentator. He is compelling.
social commentator. He is compelling.
Easy Living
'A comical and enjoyable read. This is a pleasure to indulge in at
any spare moment'
any spare moment'
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In contrast to some of the topics that Jon Ronson has written about the everyday or ordinary craziness could seem like a really dull subject matter but this book is anything but dull.
Here Ronson presents a two part piece, the first mainly involving his own stories and the second his encounters of everyday craziness involving others, stories from a newspaper column with post-scripts which sometimes turn out as interesting as the stories themselves. Sometimes these are even better than the story themselves, such as the postscript which follows a piece on a religious group called The Jesus Christians which insisted upon followers donating organs.
Ronson explains in the preface that he wanted to write about how people create bubbles of credibility in which they, sometimes they and their cohorts, are convinced they are rational while everyone else is crazy or do and say plainly irrational things as a consequence of "one thought leading to another".
I found the pace and style of writing pretty engaging, as easy to read and as interesting as his other more bizarre topics such as military scams, conspiracy theorists and paranoia in such books as The Men Who Stare at Goats and Them: Adventures with Extremists.
The real talent emerges in both accounts like that in the postscript to his piece on the Jesus Christians where he admits first becoming convinced of his own villainy by a deluge of obsessive e-mails and then uncovers the same sorts of manipulation and mind control adopted by cults operating a private nursery. Here Ronson demonstrates how as a writer he's not really a spectator but a participant in his subject matter and then is taking something fairly routine and mundane, how a private nursery operates, reconsidering and scrutinising it in light of some fresh insights. Its a very nice, short and unassuming work of reflective thoughtful writing. It makes the same point as more dense philosophical and psychological reads like The Heart of Man or The Fear of Freedom (Routledge Classics).
Finally I've got to pay tribute to the structuring of the book, however I'm only repeating what Ronson himself says in the introduction, the book finishes with a look at Stanley Kubrick and the private world created through Kubrick's hoarding tendencies. It's a lighter note to finish on and meant the book had a nice uplifting note to end on.
While there is a contents page there is no index, I dont think the book was intended to be read and referenced so I have a certain sense in which this does not feel like a great oversight or omission.
Here Ronson presents a two part piece, the first mainly involving his own stories and the second his encounters of everyday craziness involving others, stories from a newspaper column with post-scripts which sometimes turn out as interesting as the stories themselves. Sometimes these are even better than the story themselves, such as the postscript which follows a piece on a religious group called The Jesus Christians which insisted upon followers donating organs.
Ronson explains in the preface that he wanted to write about how people create bubbles of credibility in which they, sometimes they and their cohorts, are convinced they are rational while everyone else is crazy or do and say plainly irrational things as a consequence of "one thought leading to another".
I found the pace and style of writing pretty engaging, as easy to read and as interesting as his other more bizarre topics such as military scams, conspiracy theorists and paranoia in such books as The Men Who Stare at Goats and Them: Adventures with Extremists.
The real talent emerges in both accounts like that in the postscript to his piece on the Jesus Christians where he admits first becoming convinced of his own villainy by a deluge of obsessive e-mails and then uncovers the same sorts of manipulation and mind control adopted by cults operating a private nursery. Here Ronson demonstrates how as a writer he's not really a spectator but a participant in his subject matter and then is taking something fairly routine and mundane, how a private nursery operates, reconsidering and scrutinising it in light of some fresh insights. Its a very nice, short and unassuming work of reflective thoughtful writing. It makes the same point as more dense philosophical and psychological reads like The Heart of Man or The Fear of Freedom (Routledge Classics).
Finally I've got to pay tribute to the structuring of the book, however I'm only repeating what Ronson himself says in the introduction, the book finishes with a look at Stanley Kubrick and the private world created through Kubrick's hoarding tendencies. It's a lighter note to finish on and meant the book had a nice uplifting note to end on.
While there is a contents page there is no index, I dont think the book was intended to be read and referenced so I have a certain sense in which this does not feel like a great oversight or omission.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jon Ronson should write all books - I'd have read everything by now! A brilliant mix of everyday encounters and deeper journalistic pieces. See also What I Do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness for more of the same.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As an investigative journalist, Ronson's compelling forays into the bizarre aspects of modern culture has won him a cult following. This collection of his broadsheet columns focuses on the craziness closer to home, as he explores the irrational beliefs that every seemingly sane person harbours in his or her attempts to make sense of the world. Perhaps the most engaging aspect of his inquisitive focus is that he routinely turns the spotlight on his own perfidious nature, highlighting the likely emotional damage he visits on his son Joel in an attempt to create the most enchanting childhood imaginable. Frank, searching and highly amusing, it might lack the journalistic merit of his pseudo-political investigations, but it succeeds in eviscerating the fragile illusions at the core of everyday life.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Random & Readable Revelations
"Out Of The Ordinary", a showcase of some of Jon Ronson's investigative journalism, contains some excellent articles and his thoughts on some of the weirder ways of our world. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Green Man Music
Good in parts
A book of two halves - first part, a collection of short pieces and a 'diary'; the second, four longer features. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Parthurbook
Apparently very funny!
The person I bought this for as a birthday present really enjoyed the stories and some were laugh out load funny, he said. So, good for a laugh!
Published 10 months ago by Mrs. S. C. Williams
Very Ordinary snapshots of a moderate life!
Who the heck dreamt up the title of this boring book? I bought it on the basis of having enjoyed reading 'Them' some years back. Ronson should stick to that form of journalism. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Francis Webster
Ignore This Book.
If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, would they eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare? I don't know. Read more
Published on 7 July 2008 by M. J. Laurent
A Great Anthology
This book is an anthology of some of Ronson's broadsheet journalism over the last few years. It is, by its nature, episodic, but is also very, very funny and extremely well... Read more
Published on 3 Nov 2007 by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
Made me laugh out loud!
I found 'Out of the Ordinary' one of the funniest books I have ever read. I would laugh out loud with an instantaneous burst of hilarity at his expressions of the bizarre human... Read more
Published on 14 July 2007 by TiggrToes
Self indulgent and dull.
There is very little in this book that is interesting or funny.
A large section is little stories about Jon's home life and family; his ordinary and dull home life which... Read more
A large section is little stories about Jon's home life and family; his ordinary and dull home life which... Read more
Published on 11 Jun 2007 by plot hound
As expected; genius!
I've always enjoyed Jon Ronson's work - particularly his regular column in the Guardian Weekend Magazine. Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2007 by J. Davies
Less revealing than 'Goats' and 'Extremists', though Im guessing it...
Jon Ronson writes easily read, enjoyable musings over what he feels is interesting in his encounters. Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2007 by Mr. C. A. Lillie
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
