Rontel

"Rontel" by Sam Pink may be one of my favorite books by him. More gritty isolationist urban slice of life commentary? Yes please! I don't know how he does it, but Sam Pink makes mundane everyday life interesting. His thought process reminds me of my own and never thought I'd "meet" another person who approaches life like I do. Thanks for making me feel average, Sam Pink, or at the very least, duplicated.Sniff Test: "Rontel" smells like a unkempt litter box in a tiny, hot apartment that is dirty and has never actually been cleaned aside from the occasional "picking up." I know this place because I've been there too. So it smells like familiarity and vulnerability. 5/5. Amazing per usual, Mr. Pink. Must read!

I earnestly thought "this is the funniest book I have ever read" or "Rontel is the funniest book I have ever read" probably ~200x while and after reading Rontel. I said "~300x" somewhere else but ~200x seems more accurate. (I should say that I don't feel, or haven't felt, amused by, for example, Saturday Night Live, which to me has never seemed funny.) I didn't feel that Rontel (which seemed, to me, hilarious and "delightful" and moving) was distracting me with humor, or anything, from things like death and confusion. I felt like it was successfully teaching me a sustainable, non-faith-based, stimulating, considerate way to live with those things.Rontel affected my actions IRL to a degree that books, for me, rarely do. I viewed things differently for considerable amounts of time after reading Rontel and was, I think, more patient and considerate and less frustrated and paranoid. I was better able to view "problems"/[anything] as humorous and other people, like Schopenhauer recommended, as "fellow sufferers" and myself, in a calming manner, as insignificant. I honestly think that, in a clinical study, "reading Rontel 30-minutes/day" could be shown to be as effective, or much more effective (and cheaper, with less negative side-effects), for certain people, as [whatever methods are currently being used] for the treatment of depression or anger.

I've read quite a few books by Sam Pink and they basically all have the same structure; a guy who works a stupid job, lives a life in a cold town and thinks about a long of different random things. There's no beginning or end, no true conflict and it's all extremely real. If you can relate to it than you'll get good laughs. His style is minimalist, quirky, manic very alternative. You won't find this on your Barnes & Noble top sellers and chances are your friend that shows off his unique taste in Chuck Palahniuk books would find even this sort of fiction to be absurd - which baffles me, because it's not absurd.. It's the basis of many people's lives.I read No Hello's Diet, Person and Rontel back to back to back while working two minimum wage Pizza jobs and these pieces were sort of a form of religious scripture for me. It does tell the nihilistic living where nothing truly happens and how extremely boring life is. The glowing neon lights show more importance than the significance of using your friends car to go buy hangers.If you're a young adult lost in a freezing alien world you may find this comforting. These books are short and quick to read. I can swallow them up in just a few hours. There is something strangely poetic about Sam Pink - I think that shows there's a poet in all of us and in every moment of our useless daily routines.4/5

This is Chicago at the beginning of a very hot summer, where it is 90 degrees even at night. And no one has air conditioning. And you just sweat all day and all night, even after and during a shower. It's Chicago and it is terrible. There are homeless people and hockey video games from 1997. Ride the bus and train around the city. Witness a hostage situation in Uptown. And play with Rontel.Sam Pink's books perfectly capture what it is like to live in Chicago. The people you see on the bus and train. The people you are forced to interact with on a daily basis. I was reading this on the train and I felt like I was part of some secret, like I was special and no one else on the train knew what was going on or what this is about.Sam Pink's books are good. They are funny and depressing and they make me feel things. Which is what I guess books are supposed to do.Read his books, feel things, take beekeeping classes. This is life.

At every level Rontel reeks of honesty. The book is about loneliness. It's about trying to squeeze juice out of the present moment when every other moment feels like it will be filled with misery. It's about working in America. How desperate the lives of most are.There's an honesty in the inner conversations the main character has. Stories aren't events told one after another. Stories are ultimately most honest when they reveal not only the one-after-another events but the scattershot thoughts that honestly inhabit each event.The writing is funny. The author is funny. I just read out loud to my wife the "reviews" the main character was writing in the Uptown library. And how quickly that shifted to an imaginary violence revolving around the word "FRIEND!" and a nectarine.You read this book and you think, "This is me". Even though it isn't.And ultimately, this book is about a cat.