Customer Reviews

A Dead Bat In Paraguay: One Man's Peculiar Journey Through South America

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Who doesn't love this guy? He's honest about everything he goes through in his trip and you feel his ups and downs like they were your own. I really loved the way it was written and all the little details of the adventure, including the background of it and what happened afterward. If someone recommended this book and you're deciding on getting it by reading the reviews... well go ahead and give yourself a unique read with this book about a dude trying to find himself in a foreign land with foreign women.

If I had a loonie for every cubicle jockey I've known who's huffed and puffed about quitting their office slave job and going on an trip abroad, I'd have enough money to do it myself. Roosh Vörek is one of the few men who had the brains and balls to follow through. After ditching his career as an industrial microbiologist and finishing his first book, Bang, Roosh took a trip through South America that lasted six months and took him to eight countries. Now, he has transcribed the events of his trip into a travel memoir. Don't be dissuaded by his cliché-laden description of A Dead Bat in Paraguay as being about "suffering and pain and hardship and darkness" - Roosh's book is a glorious triumph of low comedy and high adventure, a breezy and worthwhile read.

Unfortunately, as this is Roosh's first foray into literary writing, his inexperience shines through at regular intervals. While he narrates his misadventures with a wry tone that readers of his blog ought to be familiar with, every so often he breaks voice to go on a sentimental missive. Take for instance, this snippet in which Roosh tries really, really hard to convince us that he cares about the plight of poor miners in Bolivia:

"Until the output of the Potosí mines cease to be profitable--and it is a matter of when, not if--these men and future generations who follow will die miners, much younger than is fair...I felt small for complaining about my relatively easy job at home that paid me a salary the miners could only dream of. How did I come to the conclusion that a professional job with fair pay in a modern building was actually torture?"

My god, someone has it worse off than you! What an original observation! Please, shut up and spare me the bathos.

But aside from these trite diversions, A Dead Bat in Paraguay maintains a breakneck pace from beginning to end. The story begins in Washington, DC, where Roosh relates the story of his life and the factors that led to him giving the bird to the 9-to-5 life and heading to South America. The sequence of events will be familiar to longtime Roosh readers, both of his current blog and his previous incarnation as DC Bachelor, but Roosh fills in details about his career and family life that are new and interesting. In particular, his description of his close relationship with his sister is moving, showing a side of Roosh that we don't see in his other writings.

An important part of any book is its diction, and on this front, A Dead Bat in Paraguay is as smooth and pleasing to read as a good wine is to drink. An acolyte of the Hemingway school of literary writing, Roosh shies away from flowery descriptions and overblown metaphors, relaying his story with an understatement that conveys imagery and emotion in its own way. His bone-dry sense of humor pervades his prose at almost all times, with lines like "I made love with the toilet." Roosh is awfully fond of toilet humor in the literal sense - a lot of the laughs come from his loving descriptions of the painful, explosive bowel movements he had while on the road. No mere clown, though, he also retells the struggles of his journey with a bluntness that gets the reader invested emotionally. A large part of the narrative is Roosh's attempts to hook up with the local women in the various places he visits, only to be met with repeated failure. His constant battle to adapt his game to the cultural idiosyncrasies of the women who he tries to bed is so compelling that when he finally meets success, you'll want to cheer.

The frankness and honesty of A Dead Bat in Paraguay is a refreshing change from the fake, phony, and fraudulent memoirs that have flooded the book world in recent years, but it also hurts the book in some ways. Any good storyteller has the ability to BS with aplomb, and Roosh isn't quite there yet. His emphasis on relaying the details of his trip has too much of a "just the facts, ma'am" feel to it, as if he was writing a college paper and not a commercial book. The weakness of this approach culminates in the book's ending, which just sucks. In fact, it isn't really an "ending" - the book just sort of stops.

In pointing out these issues, I don't want come off as being too critical. In a literary world full of flotsam, jetsam, and other varieties of garbage, Roosh Vörek has produced something remarkable and memorable. Feel free to give him your greenbacks - he's earned them.

I am a big fan of Roosh's other books, Bang and Day Bang, so it was only natural that I should check out his other works. As someone who is deeply interested in exotic travel, as well as women from foreign countries, it seemed like a no-brainer for me. After finishing it, I was thoroughly entertained, as well as educated on just how gritty, exhausting, and occasionally touching travel can be to a solitary man who is searching for some meaning in his life.

It describes many points of "non-interest" (according to popular travel guides anyway) that a traveler looking for a unique experience might explore, as well as an honest look into more of the typical tourist destinations.. These include horrifically long bus rides and stomach issues and sparse moments of beauty. But Roosh often makes it seem as if the journey might be more important than the destination, and that all of these trials will bring some sort of deeper meaning at the journey's conclusion. I certainly am turned off of South America after reading it, but Brazil seems like a cool place to check out.

Overall, the book was highly enjoyable and I finished it quickly after purchasing it. There are moments that really touched me towards the end with regards to my own experiences with traveling and leaving romances behind, and moments that made me cringe. Fans of travel stories with an agenda towards bedding foreign women will love it. Highly recommended!

I love travel. I love reading about new places, and hearing about how other people learn and change. Except this dumb author doesnt learn or change at all. He just goes from hostel to hostel, strikes out with the women, and whines about having diarrehea.

I'm surprised that this book got a few bad reviews. It seems perhaps those readers didn't review the book description carefully enough. The title even reads: "peculiar." Anyway, if you're looking for a travel guide or some romantic endeavor into south american culture or history, this is not the book for you. However, if you're looking for a unique, uncensored and honest view into a young man's journey through south america, this is certainly a great read.

Travelling and picking up girls just scratches the surface of the many levels this book touches upon. The book delves into a young man's struggle with a mundane "office space" lifestyle, dealing with and overcoming failure, love, and making difficult life decisions. Besides the toilet humor, the book has very introspective moments that goes through a young man's mind and heart that many of us would not admit to. That said, the book is also full of hilarious stories during his travels and the characters he meets along the way. The combination of the aforementioned makes for a refreshingly different perspective to travelling.

As someone who has traveled extensively in South America I'm always excited to see a new travelogue, especially as there's not a lot of travel writing available about that continent. This, however, was a complete waste of time, it's boring (unless you enjoy dozens of references to diarrhea), self-indulgent, and shows very little insight into the countries and cultures Roosh visited.

There's little to no descriptive writing of the places visited. Actually there's more about hostels and dorm rooms than there is about cities, jungles, ruins, festivals or history. So if you're interested in those things try instead a book by Hugh Thomson.

But what about girls and pickup? Roosh is a pick up artist (pua), and does have some funny stories about American girls on his blog. If you are expecting torrid tales of his amorous adventures in South America you'll be out of luck. In six months the poor man only scored twice. A huge chunk of the book describes his attempts to date girls in Argentina. The method apparently involved staying at a gringo hostel for a month and enjoying daily chicken dinners with equally lovelorn fellow travelers. Truly riveting stuff there.

Anyone looking for a fun read about young travelers in South America will find The Gringo Trail by Mark Mann far more rewarding (and he gets laid more than twice).

We are living now in Colombia and are always interested in insightful reading on South America. I somewhat reluctantly downloaded "A Dead Bat" thinking that perhaps there might be at least some perceptions about the various countries and cities here that would be stimulating and informative.

Forget it! There are a few insights but basically written from a crass, superficial point of view. The book is basically about the author's generally futile narcissistic on-the road quest to get laid with South America serving as background; after a few pages it all becomes tedious, tawdry and almost gross. Who gives a damn?!!

True grossness makes its mark quickly with his bathroom obsession dealing endlessly with the various maladies he contracts in the squalid hostels and restaurants he describes in loving detail. It all seems to me sophomoric, unbelievably self-indulgent, vulgar, and badly-written. Perhaps, I am a fogey, but frankly, UGH!

This book will resonate with any young man in corporate America who asks himself, "Is this all that life has to offer?" It is page turning tale about a man's journey to find adventure and new meaning in a world that had become monotonous and uninspiring. For any young man who is considering making a change in his life and wants to see what the world has to offer, I would strongly encourage you read this book.

A Dead Bat in Paraguay chronicles the South American journey of Roosh, a working man fed up with the monotony of work and life in the city. Though expecting a paradise of a laid back lifestyle with exotic girls eager to meet a gringo, Roosh immediately encounters obstacle after obstacle, almost comically, making him doubt if the trip was what he needed. Though the book starts off slowly, it quickly picks up steam as he encounters parasites, dirty hostels, loneliness, and girls who want nothing to do with him. Roosh's honest voice feels very universal, saying things and expressing emotions many feel while traveling but never express. Throughout the book he meets many interesting characters and sites while searching for women, something he had no problem with in the United States. While the book is laugh-out-loud funny at times, it is also serious, as Roosh realizes the value of his trip, though it's completely different from what one would expect. Confident and tough on his blog, in Dead Bat a whole new side of Roosh is exposed, a side everybody can identify with.

Roosh's new travelogue, A Dead Bat in Paraguay, is a fun and insightful read for anyone interested in backpacking travel. I say insightful because Roosh is at his best when he offers his travel perspectives including thoughts of his unique meaning of travel and what it offers him. But this book strays from other in the travel genre because a main theme of this book is traveling to meet women. Not shady sex tourism but the literal pursuit of women which is fascinating as Roosh details the differences between women around the world. He doesn't hold back with countless anecdotes of his death inducing bowel issues and epic failures.

What the book is not is some around the world trip about the stereotypical tourist sites like the Machu Picchu or Amazon jungle. Instead, Roosh focuses on the relationships he forms while traveling ranging from interactions with foreign women to interactions with other backpackers. The book does, however, have its limits. While Roosh does explore interesting topics like meeting women in different cultures or the expectations of traveling, he doesn't seem to integrate the topics together that well.

His theme of wanting to meet women is not evident from the beginning of the book and when it's first introduced it can come across as somewhat awkward for people unfamiliar with the new community dedicated to meeting women. For instance, he often goes into specific detail about his interaction with women including the more awkward subjects like kino. This may turn off people who do not look favorably on the pick-up-artist community. I would have liked Roosh to explain why his techniques are important in meeting women and why he got into using them in the first place.

While the book has some issues, it is well worth reading at the very least for a different take on backpacking travel from a person with an interesting background and perspective. His story is an inspiration for anyone wanting to change their life significantly and will no doubt offer encouragement for those wanting to do likewise; to quit a well paid job for a different lifestyle. Roosh's story demonstrates that even if the change you make does not meet your expectations, it is still worth mixing things up so you never go through life asking the what if question. It important to note that Roosh is currently living in South America even after all of his misadventures which is an amazing thing to see after reading A Dead Bat in Paraguay.