Customer Reviews

Drink, Play, F@#k: One Man's Search for Anything Across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Three words for this hysterical, witty, GENIUS novel. 1: Oh. 2: My. 3: God. A satire on the novel Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert), comedian writer Andrew Gottlieb nails the angry husband who takes a year off dedicated to drinking, gambling and, well, f@#king. The protagonist, Bob Sullivan, is in Ireland when he notes that his ex-wife was on "some kind of whirlwind transcontinental spiritual journey. Yet one more idea of mine that she copied that I'll never get any credit for." (page 51). The intrinsic connections to the Eat Pray Love story are masterful without being overwhelming or obvious - so much so, this story would stand alone if you'd never even heard of Eat Pray Love. If every story has two sides, Drink Play F@#k is a convincing version of a scorned husband's tale of a marriage break-up and subsequent quests to discover what really matters in life: happiness.

Parody can be the funniest of all types of humor, so it was with high expectations that when I saw the book cover of Andrew Gottlieb's, Drink, Play, [...], as a match to Elizabeth Gilbert's popular Eat, Pray, Love, I picked it up with relish. I had given Gilbert a two-star rating, and never bothered to write a review. Following a divorce, protagonist Bob Sullivan decides to let himself go loose for the first time in his life, and see what happens. His first step was to drink, and he did that with gusto in Ireland, meeting compatible characters and telling stories to all who would listen. I wish this book had such gusto, but the drinking episode came across as maudlin. The pace picked up when Bob heads to Vegas to play, and along the way meets a guru who guides him through the Vegas games. The gambling, golfing and playing had little humor and unexceptional stories. At just the right time, the guru suggests the pleasures of Thailand, and Bob ends up in a remote resort to enjoy great physical satisfaction, until a car accident. While I laughed at times, there just wasn't enough laughter to make the full parody work. By the end of the book, I couldn't care less what happened to Bob.

Rating: One-star (Read only if your interest is strong)

The premise of this book is great: parody Eat, Pray, Love. Few books are as ripe for parody as that one. I mean, how can anyone mess that up? Well, Gottlieb did. What he delivers is a sterilized, homogenized, made-for-TV tale of a guy I suspect is really patterned after John Glenn when he was a younger man, but on estrogen. It is obvious this story panders to the female book-buying audience and Bob Sullivan comes off as a made-acceptable character who apologizes constantly for being male. There's no other explanation for the constant I'm-not-really-that-guy disclaimers that quickly become Sullivan's mantra. Well, if he's not that guy then why was he written as the main character? Wouldn't a parody mean he should be the antithesis of the lady from Eat, Pray, Love? Bob Sullivan's friends are right out of a screen writing 101 class, becoming Bob's bad-boy, yet acceptable, yet wouldn't want to marry, guides to the protagonist's journey into his supposed debauchery; the debauchery that never seems to pick up steam or muster any credibility. But there was no real debauchery, except for maybe the frat-boy drinking, which Gottlieb could get away with without turning off a female audience. And there's no f@#king. No there wasn't. A brief yet somehow made-acceptable tryst with the girl from India, and then he falls madly in love while laid up in his sick bed. Yeah, that's real debauchery tempered with an eye toward book sales to the fairer sex. Why am I so disappointed with this book? Because I expected to be at least slightly entertained and never thought I would have my intelligence insulted with such a trite, backpeddling and poorly constructed attempt at parody. And for believing, once again, some glowing reviews without checking to see what other books the reviewers have reviewed. Stupid me.

I was looking for a book to read while on my last beach vacation, and I was lured in by the title "Drink, Play, F@#k. I had not heard of the book "Eat Pray Love", and so I had no basis on the layout, or if it tried to satire the original, if indeed that was the intention.
As noted in a previous review...I too, was hoping for a little more energy, creative storytelling, and "guy talk", but what we received was 38 chapters with no cohesiveness, forced gambling metaphors, and upper-echelon frivolous disrespect for money with the occasional "Dennis Miller-like" caveat on Monday night football....which as we all know does not work.

I stopped reading this book 4 times, but had a 5 hour flight on the way back, I was so bored I finished it.
Here, I will summarize the book into 3 chapters:
Chapter 1 - My wife left me, I have enough money so I went to Ireland and got drunk daily.
Chapter 2 - My wife is still not with me, I have enough money so I went to Las Vegas, made frivoulous wagers, got drunk a lot, and played golf.
Chapter 3 - My wife is still not with me, I have enough money so I went to Thailand, to a ridiculously expensive and exclusive resort, had sex with a young woman, found my morals and my future ex-wife.

I would have tried to sell this book on Amazon, but I threw it in the trash, as I unpacked.

Not a bad book, but not great either. With so many other good books out there, don't waste your time with this one.

Before reading, I briefly glanced at some of the Amazon reviews; most were only lukewarm. Thinking the other reviews might have been a bit harsh, I gave the book the benefit of the doubt, purchased, and read. Mistake.

With a word like "f@#k" in the title, I expected the book to be a bit more edgy. What the book delivered was much milder- a recently divorced, middle age man going through somewhat of a midlife crises in the form of one year across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand. Sounds promising and full of potential, right? Nothing nearly as provocative as you might expect. Most of the potentially edgy scenarios are glossed over or omitted entirely. To be fair, some of the vignettes are OK, but again, everything is overall very mild.

Having read " Eat, pray, love", I eagerly awaited for the parody on the title. However, there is not even one humorous or witty sentence in this entire book. If this guy can go to print,then by all means, we can all become published writers. I hardly review books but this one was such a mess,I just had to issue a warning. Don't bother reading it unless you like repetitive, stale writting that leaves you disappointed and bored.

The premise was GREAT but in actual believability, YA RIGHT ??????

I can only guess that he wanted to appeal to the women readers more.
Or he really is a P*ssy.....
Whatever, I wouldn't recommend this to any man.
I'm talking w/ experience on my side as I am X-Navy, divorced 16 years, been to Vegas about 50 x's and Thailand several times.
Oh ya , I also drink like a fish.

Easy quick read, mediocre story. Well & good jumping on the Eat, Love, Pray format if the content is good but it barely scratches the surface of being a decent story.

Reads too much like fiction - didnt believe most of it...just felt like it was a money spinner trying to be James Frey with the Gilbert format and not succeeding on either front.

I read (okay - listened to the unabridged version) of Eat, Pray, Love last year and saw this tagged at Amazon as one of those "you might be interested in" books. I like travel literature. I have traveled quite a bit in Asia (Thailand in particular) so I thought I would buy it and read it. I wasn't disappointed. It was a quick page turner that I burned through in a week or so of stolen moments of reading. I was struck by the way the book danced on the edge of credibility. The central character was engaged in what were believable pursuits in Ireland and Thailand - but the Vegas part was too coincidental and does anyone without a history in the city really get so much gratis (a suite at the Bellagio) and - where did this guy get all the money to live on?

Part of the problem with the book is that I did not read carefully enough the sales information or realize I was reading a piece of fiction. I thought it was true until I finished the book. Had I known the book was a work of fiction (I thought it as an embellished true account) going in I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much for the extraordinary nature of this man's journey - the people and circumstances connecting each transition (from Ireland to Vegas to Thailand) would have been lost.

That being said - go ahead and read it. There is enough truth in the fiction to engage your traveling spirit and inspire you too to let go a bit and live. For all of us wanting to cast our jobs off for a year or more to go travel - this is an enjoyable and encouraging tome.

Oh - and it's well written. The author has a background writing comedy and it shows in the witty word usage in the book and allusions to popular culture sprinkled throughout.

Cleverness, intelligent writing, quirky characters . . . all characteristics of good satire. Good satire also requires that you assume many of the characteristics of the original work. The reason why good satire works is that it's probably more difficult to write than the original work. Good satire has to equal or surpass the cleverness of the original work.

This book doesn't fulfill the needs of good satire, unfortunately. This is just plain bad. It's predictable and not clever at all It's simply a piece of writing written by a guy who wants to poke fun at women who were inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. In his effort to give the reader the impression that he doesn't take himself seriously, he comes off as trying to convince the reader to take him seriously. If I met this author, I'd probably walk away thinking that he was a fat Southern Republican frat boy who was never forced to stand on his own two feet.

If you like satire, read the Harvard Lampoon's satirical work on the Twilight series . . . "Nightlight" is clever. Any Twilight haters will roll on the floor when reading this novel. Twilight lovers will enjoy it as well. It's a great bathroom book and can be read quickly or in small bits.