Access Instantly Matadors Compiled And Edited By Steve Bauman Displayed As Visual Format

is a pretty great read, I really enjoyed it. I wish it had lasted longer in order to wrap up some of the plot lines/relationships more cleanly, though.
What happened with Bain But I was definitely hooked from the beginning and read the whole thing in like two days.
The ending was what I was looking for, So that was satisfying.

The descriptions were very vivid and realistic, As a quasinerdy book/music/selfdeprecationlovin person, I related to the main character, He was whiny but this was balanced by a goodnatured attitude and a measure of existential anxiety that I understand all too well.
Happiness never seems to have been achieved, but maybe that happens in the next book Or maybe it's just a bad idea.
You just kind of hope for it with this dude,

Anyway, I enjoyed it,
Who is Michael Norton writing to and why is he so sensitive to the superficial identities of others, particularly those on Facebook These questions drive the suspense in Matadors, a oneway epistolary mininovel by Steve Bauman.
Yet the underlying question for the uncool but likeable protagonist is, where do I fit in this world

Michael Nortons emotionally moribund existence gets a jolt when he reunites with an old schoolmate from California, Blake “Bain” Bivins, who has come to Burlington, Vermont on business.
Bain has always been largerthanlife and a womanizer whereas Michael has always been an introvert and clumsy with the opposite sex.
When they were twenty, charismatic Bain was a source of amusement and even inspiration for Michael, But now, at age forty and corpulent, and moreover filled with an adults awareness of such things, Michael finds the gap, which has only widened with the years, disorientating.


As in olden days, Michael allows Bain to lead him out on a night on the town where the Californian befriends Michaels locals almost instantly.
Michael is somewhat turned offread enviousat Bains success the guys still got it, Bain is frustrated with Michaels reticence and prods him to be more aggressive, which only exacerbates Michaels tendency to compare how his actual self to how others appear, not surprisingly with unfavourable results.


His inability to get it is captured nicely by his experience and obsession with Facebook,

Yet I joined Facebook and created a profile under my real name, with personal information that can be viewed by almost anyone.
For a while, I felt like I was in control of the situation, I added an application that tracks the movies, music, and books I like, figuring that might allow me to connect with cool people.
But it only served to remind me how much out of touch I am with the tastes of my socalled peers.
Which Im fine with, so long as I can reconcile my desire to stop judging others for their awful, awful tastes in everything with being able to easily see, every single day, their awful, awful tastes in everything.


Bains presence awkwardly illuminates Michaels social withdrawal and penchant for taking the safe route, Bain truly becomes the bane of Michaels existence, His presence instigates the emails within which all these events with Bane are narrated to an old love that make up this book.
Her name has been Xed out, which reveals a great deal too, As does the fact Michael doubts she even accesses this particular email account, Its only within this relatively safe medium that Michael can let loose his selfexpression, and possibly gain independence.


Such selfabsorbed introspection often signals a dull, plotless story, Yet Matadors entertains because Michael, through his often uncomfortably candid emails, is on a quest, A quest for his own identity and place in the world and the irony is that hes not really aware of it.
The smooth and unselfconscious writing from an often amusing and selfdeprecating voice makes it easy to enjoy Matadors.
The emails are generally short streams of selfconsciousness and vary enough in mood and subject matter to not get tiresome, as we patiently wait to discover his relationship with the mysterious recipient.


I doubt Matadors could ever get published in the traditional world, which makes it a good example of the value of selfpublishing.
Unfortunately, the old bugaboos of sloppy proofreading are here too with the predominant culprit missing or transposed words.
Fix that up and this story transforms into a fine specimen of independent storytelling and publishing,
This was a different kind of story than I expected, I dont mean this in a negative way on the contrary, I really enjoyed it,
What drives the novel is the main character, Michael Norton, He is a wonderfully real character, with plenty of flaws that come out throughout the book, He is seriously uncool, but the reader begins to like him despite this, or maybe because of this.
Hes envious and obsessive, and feels at odds with the world around him, Whos not felt this way Thats why hes so effective as a protagonist,
The writing is good, although I do wish the story had been a bit longer, There were a few loose ends which deserved a tidier conclusion, Also, a few editing errors got in the way of the sentences flow, but this is easily fixed and might not bother some of you.

Id definitely recommend this to all of you who love to read things that are different, There is a tinge of philosophy to the story that elevates it to one that will linger in your head days after you finish it.
Ill be looking forward to more books by this author,
Admittedly this book is way outside my wheel house, I am not a fan of the "heterosexual male telling his problems"/ "heterosexual male having a midlife crisis" story most especially when the narrator is that unreliable, heterosexual male.
Nor am I a fan of "lyrical language over plot" books, Bauman does manage to do both of these quite well, and does inject a plot as the book develops.


And this book is about development, While Mike himself might be unsure or "socially peaked in the fifth grade," the narrative voice Bauman gives

him is clear and distinguished, albeit a little wordy for an email writer.
I found myself asking, would any friend, or former loved one, read these emails And really, the narrator assumes that his recipient is not reading them and that makes him seem excessively needy rather than a lovable loser.
As a result, I can't quite connect with him and even think the line that appears in the text: I am on of those "just get over it" people.
But Mike clearly can't just get over it, and works to some closure for himself, I'm not quite convinced he gets it, and I wish there was a stronger sense that he was going to be okay or that he had learned a life lesson of some sort beyond "friending high schools buds on Facebook is a bad idea.
"

I also don't know most of the song references, so I assume they are integral to the plot.
Or at the very least, they are an easter egg of some sort I feel like I should know them anyway, and so there is a bit of a disconnect for me because I don't with the exception of "Ghostbusters" and a few others, of course.


The cover design is one of the best I've seen this year, As a selfpublished text, this one does packaging and marketing incredibly well, .