Book Log 2015 #24: Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries by Jon Ronson

I needed a book at the end of a vacation, and found this for five Euros at a souvenir shop. It was easily the best five Euros I spent on that trip (non-Guinness division).


The book is a collection of stories that continue Ronson's quest to understand life and the fringe and how people cope in extraordinary situations. The stories are grouped into rough thematic sections ("Rebellious Lives," "Everyday Difficulty," etc.), though I would have just as happily read the stories if they were just thrown in there in chronological order.

Some of the stories have an investigative quality (most notably the title story, about a young female staffer on a cruise who apparently killed herself by going overboard, and the cruise line's apparent stonewalling of family and law enforcement), while others are more out there (for example, attending a UFO convention with the apparently dedicated UFO believer Robbie Williams). There's even an example of Ronson becoming part of his own story in coverage of a pedophilia trial involving a well-known British music producer. Also highly recommended is a story about Stanley Kubrick and his voluminous archives.

The collection is probably more in line with Them or Out of the Ordinary than The Men Who Stare at Goats, but it very much worth perusing, even if you only read selected stories.

(PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book of short stories. I know they probably meant fiction, but I'll take it).