Hi guys, down here and today I'm going to be doing a quick review of American Psycho by Bretti Stennellis. I actually did this as a buddy read with a bunch of people. It was another buddy reads that I arranged when I was on my buddy reads hype. I'm going to read you the blurb. Patrick Bateman is 26 and works on Wall Street. He is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to a head-on collision with America's greatest dream and its worst nightmare. American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about the world. We all recognize but do not wish to come from. I have kind of mixed feelings about this. The first 100 odd pages of it was super boring but I think it was kind of deliberate. It was to set the seat of Bateman as this Wall Street exec asshole who doesn't care about anyone. You know, it was very much a throwback to that time in the 80s and the 90s when Wall Street was the in thing. And I would like to think that we've moved on to society now. However, there are still a lot of lessons we can learn. What I thought was particularly interesting as these incest and references to Donald Trump, which only make this more relevant now than it was when it was written. In terms of some of the violent scenes, I don't know, it felt almost a bit grittier to us. It was unnecessary. Like, I don't mind a good violent scene. I just thought, I don't know, it was a bit boring. The whole book was a bit like that really. It wasn't subtle, you know? You got what it was trying to tell you, like the whole thing of like worshiping money as if it was religion. And contrasting the violent of Bateman as this sort of serial killer dude with the sort of violent attitude of Wall Street. It wasn't done subtly at all. Because it was so unsuttle and it just hit you around the face with a message of it. It just kind of annoyed me at times. I did still think it was okay. It was written okay. It reminded me of American urban Welsh, but not as good. Like, urban Welsh tends to write about these sort of violent, down and out, you know, working class Scottish characters, whereas Easton Ellis was writing about these sort of affluent Americans. And so because of that, I didn't really care. Like, no offense Americans, but I mean, it's easier for me coming from a working class background in the UK to relate to working class British people than rich Americans basically. I'm going to go through and check out some of the flags that I put in it. I do think most of these were references to Donald Trump. And I also think the fact that Donald Trump is used throughout this is like this icon of everything that this psychopath idolizes in the same way that you might have, you know, a racist idolizing Hitler. This is a psychopath, like literally a psychopathic murderer who's obsessed with the pursuit of wealth and pretty much nothing else. And that he, he idolizes Donald Trump. It makes me think, surely you can't have voted for Donald Trump if you've read this book. I wouldn't say this book is necessarily anti-Trump, but the associations that it makes with Trump really quite concerning when you think that that's what people voted for. But I don't want to get into politics. He's not my president, so, you know, and also I voted in the UK elections and our prime minister isn't who I voted for either. But then every time I've ever voted for anything, the thing I've been voting against, I've never voted for something. I've always voted against something I don't believe in and then that things happen. So I don't know how much I believe in democracy or whatever. They're talking about here what women want, you see. They want a hard body. You can take them to Lasirque twice a week. Get them into Nell's on a regular basis. Or maybe a close personal acquaintance of Donald Trump. In the elevator, Fredric Dibble tells me about an item on page 6 or some other gossip column about Ivana Trump and then about this new Italian Thai place on the Upper East side that he went to last night with Emily Hamilton and starts raving about the great fusile shittake dish. Bear in mind this was also while Trump was visiting the UK, so he was all over the news as well. And I'm just like, please stop talking about Donald Trump. Why are you giving him the air time? That's what he wants. That's why I don't get why shit loads of people marched against him as well and had this inflatable Trump baby. I'm like, you do realize that's what he wants. He loves controversy like just ignore him, totally ignore him. Don't talk about him in the news. That's the best way. Is that Donald Trump's car? I ask looking over at the limousine stuck next to us on the gridlock. It's an article on your hero, Donald Trump, McDermott Grins. Is that Ivana Trump? She asks, peering over my shoulder. I walk around. Where? Where's Ivana? How could you mistake that wench for Ivana? There's, he's having this conversation, Bateman is with this girl and she goes, what are you gonna do? She asks, wait three years until you're 30. Four years, I say, glaring. It's four years until I'm 30. Four years, three years, three months. Oh God, what's the difference? You'll still be an old man. I'm 30 in 11 months. Caruthus keeps trying to placate everyone by telling us that Donald Trump is a big YouTube fan. That's just more of a reason to hate you too. Faded posters of Donald Trump on the cover of Time magazine cover the windows of another abandoned restaurant. Now, this is the thing is when I started noticing it, I couldn't not notice it. And this is exactly what I mean. Like every point that he tries to make is as unsuttle as this. It's hammered in, page after page after page. And you're just like, oh, stop it. Hi, Pat Bateman, I say, holding out my hand. Yeah? Hi, Donald Trump. My wife, I've ironed as in the back, he says, sarcastically, taking it. Why wasn't Donald Trump invited to your party? Not Donald Trump again, Evelyn Moans. Yes, exactly Evelyn. Don't be intimidated, Daisy says. Fur is only in accessory. Don't be intimidated by it. Well, actually, fur isn't just only in accessory, as the skin of animals often taken from them while they're still alive. I've seen footage of a coyote being skinned while still alive, and you just have this literally a fleshless coyote bleeding from, you know, head to tail, like lying there twitching. We're going to a party, Donald Trump's having, I lie. I'm thinking about nothing. It's silent in the office. To break it, I point out a book on top of the desk next to the San Palagrino bowl, the art of the deal by Donald Trump. And then suddenly you get the reveal where he suddenly is, a psycho. Because I said to begin with, he's not really a psychopath, he's just a sociopath. Then he just starts randomly killing people. Having gone back through this and having had some time to think about it, I did give this a 3.5 out of 5 in my review on my website, and on good reads, but haven't thought about it. It's a low 3. And also, like I say, while it does have some interesting stuff to say that's still relevant to our society today, it's just the way it was delivered. It was so clunky and so clumsy. I got a go now, anyway, my camera's almost out of space. So on that note, thanks a lot for watching. Don't forget to let me know in the comments if you read this book.