{"id":691,"date":"2013-07-08T07:39:33","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T15:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=691"},"modified":"2013-07-08T07:39:33","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T15:39:33","slug":"review-savages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/08\/review-savages\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Savages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Savages\"<\/a>
\n Savages<\/a> by Don Winslow<\/a>
\n My rating: 4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Savages\u2014Review on Goodreads<\/p>\n

Here goes.<\/p>\n

First thing\u2019s first: I like Don Winslow\u2019s style. It\u2019s quasi-playful without being merely silly. It\u2019s smart without being intellectual, has a rhythm and pace that speeds the reader along, apropos to the subject-matter. A coupla guys living the good life have to deal with some of the evil the good life affords. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s sex and drugs and violence. I don\u2019t know if Winslow\u2019s style would be conducive to a novel that didn\u2019t have sex and drugs and violence. A novel about drugs always has violence, I guess, and sex, and although a novel about sex doesn\u2019t require drugs or violence, for my money it would get pretty boring pretty fast, Self indulgent. Savages<\/i> borders on self-indulgent, but Winslow\u2019s isn\u2019t day-dreaming, he\u2019s telling you a story, so I\u2019ll forgive him that.<\/p>\n

Lots of info about the Mexican drug cartels, and one hopes, lots of speculation about how the accompanying violence and greed could spill into the US. (And we better pray it\u2019s just speculation, and not the revelation of really good research, because otherwise, we\u2019re in big trouble.)<\/p>\n

That the novel was made into a movie is a no brainer. By Oliver Stone, no less. Optioned before Winslow was even done writing it, no less. And yeah, the plot and characters are movie-thriller flat. Who cares. It\u2019s a fun ride, and as I said, the style\u2019s the thing anyway.<\/p>\n

So as always the best praise I can think of is that, having read Savages<\/i>, I want to read more by this guy. But I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m spoiled. Don\u2019t know if his other stuff will have the same wit and creativity. Maybe I should have read something else first. Maybe I should have gotten ahold of that Winslow gestalt and seen riches in Savages<\/i> I missed because of his treatment of text.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll let you know. In the meantime, you should read Savages<\/i>. It was perfect for my condition: on vacation, on a chair on a porch in Kauai guzzling beers and recovering from pounding surf. Fair warning: that\u2019s no exaggeration about the sex and drugs and violence.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Savages by Don Winslow My rating: 4 of 5 stars Savages\u2014Review on Goodreads Here goes. First thing\u2019s first: I like Don Winslow\u2019s style. It\u2019s quasi-playful without being merely silly. It\u2019s smart without being intellectual, has a rhythm and pace that speeds the reader along, apropos to the subject-matter. A coupla guys living the good life … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: Savages”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-b9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}