Rp finch skin in the game

I nodded my head and pretended I felt this same enthusiasm. Really, though, my thought balloon said something like:. A movie? Well … this is a book.

A BOOK! It makes its own movie, right inside your head…. Skin in the Game bounds straight in from central casting. His crackpot, flaky characters tickle us. So do his sentences. Witness Tito Venga, black turtleneck and blazer, and Orinda, his employee. Tito owns a strip club. Orinda dances. We overhear a career crisis:. Look, I been entrepreneuring all over the place and I know you belong on that stage. Sit down. Some bottom-feeder out there is looking at me through his fingers.

And not any too clean. Nice retro bush, kinda quaint, trimmed but not to excess — which sets you apart these days, babe, like some sorta trademark. Finch owns the intellectual property of this book, and he comes by it honestly—he worked for 25 years as a mostly mergers and acquisition lawyer for an Atlanta firm before pirouetting away onto the thin ice of novel writing. Different versions have alternative endings, some much darker than the one honed and polished by the Brothers Grimm.

In one, the son is cast out because he is gay, and his sister leaves home to help her sibling survive in the woods. Related are themes of The Witch and especially The Woods, on which Drager concentrates her narrative focus. There are riddles and traps. There are monsters and ghosts and broken bodies. Among the twins and other paired sibs are Hansel and Gretel in , their intricate relationship, their mutual protection, devotion, and benign deception; Gutenberg and his twin sister with her own harrowing secret tale in ; and a gay computer programmer and his caretaker sister at the height of the AIDS epidemic in Yet another theme is transmission of information.

In , twin space probes transmit Hansel and Gretel in binary code into the depths of space in the hope that a sibling planet of Earth might capture the signals. Drager is, of course, not the only author to engage in modern or post-modern contextualizing of folktales.

A thug wanting to create a theme park of strip joints. An attorney going nuts and seeing ghosts. The mob using the Internet to steal identities or break cyber codes. The government wanting to suppress information to break codes. The humor and portrayal of the law firm are the things that really set this novel apart.

Author R. Finch is an attorney in real life. I laughed at the absurdity throughout the book. It makes you never want to see a lawyer again. Not even look at one. It took Finch years to write this book, and it shows. Finch succeeded. Apr 30, Laurie rated it it was amazing.

This carefully crafted novel has a lot of something for everyone. Lawyers, both good and bad, mobsters, strippers, ghosts, amputees, sex, humiliating retaliation, kidnapping, nanotechnology, CIA, investment wonks--the whole lot.

What is amazing about this book is that for all the careful pacing of the plot, the writing and dialogue really sparkle. With some first-time writers, sometimes you get great stories with fast-moving plots, but the writing and characters are just "meh".

Other times the c This carefully crafted novel has a lot of something for everyone. Other times the characters are terrific but they don't do anything or go anywhere fast enough to hold a reader's attentions.

Lucky for us, Finch is an all-around master who gets it all right. Each character could be a mere stereotype if handled by a less attentive writer, but Finch's wonderfully crafted dialogue brings a unique voice and point of view to each of these characters. It is one of those books where you know who is talking without having to be told by the author.

And it's not just the usual devices being employed here. Finch really creates a person who talks a certain way and then consistently brings that through scene after scene. The humor in this book doesn't laugh at itself.

You really have to be smart to find it, and then you are rewarded. Soooooooo much that is said has a double meaning, but not always in the overly obvious nudge-nudge-wink-wink kind of way.

Also, Finch throws in just enough physics and nanotechnology to make the reader feel kind of smart, like, "Oh, goody, I get to read a book with hot sex scenes, funny stuff, AND serious discussions about development of nanotechnology?

Yes please! It also would have been fun to see Tito Venga's concept for a "Strip Mall"--a strip club with different rooms with different themes--come to life, but maybe a sequel awaits. All in all, this is a super fun book that reads as fast as a breezy beach book, but in fact is full of serious ideas about technology, shifts in space and time, class, the realities of competing purposes in business and national security, and, of course, money.

Definitely worth a read this summer! Mar 21, Drucilla Pettibone rated it it was amazing. Having worked at a few law firms in my time, I can say for sure that Finch's characters are close to reality!! It's a case of the truth being funnier than fiction.

I loved how he drew all the characters - the lawyers especially - and relationships between Eben, Ellie and Wolf - such complex characters and yet ultimately endearing. An absolutely brilliant story line as well, which I was constantly surprised by, and can't believe how beautifully Finch pulled off such off-the-wall connections!!

My Having worked at a few law firms in my time, I can say for sure that Finch's characters are close to reality!! My favorite part of all, however, was the writing itself - it is amazingly tight, expertly crafted, and highly sophisticated while still always serving the story. I've read it twice now and have had to stop a number of times and read a passage to my husband so that we could savor a particular description or metaphor.

It's no wonder this book has been nominated for the National Book Award!! It is well-deserved. I just hope it is also made into a movie - it would adapt to film tremendously well and I would love to see it all leap to life on the big screen! Still, nothing would come close to Finch's skill and art in wordcrafting. Also hoping for a sequel! I'm a fan for life. Jun 20, Andrea Perry Block rated it it was amazing. This book is an absolute treat!

As some of the other reviewers have written, there is something for everyone. The characters are well rounded and truly interesting, and their depth is revealed through their actions and dialogue, rather than merely through flashbacks or other simple devices that many first This book is an absolute treat! The characters are well rounded and truly interesting, and their depth is revealed through their actions and dialogue, rather than merely through flashbacks or other simple devices that many first time novelists rely on too heavily.