"I read George Saunders' In Persuasion Nation because a friend of a friend passed it on to me.
This is a book of fiction; these are short stories. If it were real, you would be greatly disturbed because of what the characters are driven to do, particularly based on TV commercials and radio ads that they've heard or seen. This book is a collection of short stories. They are quite surreal and strange. They are very much influenced by the media, so pretty much every story has a very strong media influence, whether it's about how we're influenced by what commercials we've seen and how we end up living those or, in one case some characters live a 24-hour TV show. It's just extremely stressed on media and also the compulsion to buy based on advertisements that we've seen.
I think my favorite may be the short story that has the same title as the book, "In Persuasion Nation," because it is incredibly creative, and it's all about these people who finally try to rebel against the Twinkie running away with the boy's girlfriend, and the small group of people band together to try to fight the dominant products on the market that are forcing them to consume them. But in the end, they get pretty much pulverized by these products that are so much powerful than we are. Some of the stories do drag on past their initial interest and sort of creative, "Oh, that's funny and interesting," and where you're like, "Okay, I'm ready for it to go on." So my attention span was a little bit shorter than some of the stories.
It's really interesting reading so many stories that are all media influenced 'cause it really makes you think about what impact the media has on you but � not just the media, but very specifically media targeted at getting you to buy something and the influence of that, and also reality TV. I think it really, by reading this book it really makes you think about what impact does that exposure to media have on the choices you make, particularly when you're buying and if you buy things just because you're exposed to that. I would give this book four out of five stars."
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