For my blog post this week I have decide to write on the book bring down the house by Ben Mezrich. The reason that I even picked up this book was because it was recommended by my  advanced placement statistics teacher as a good read and it was, and could be used as part of an extra credit assignment. This book is about six MIT students who were able to make millions of dollars in Las Vegas by counting cards while playing black jack.

Since I was reading this book for math class I expected it to be quite boring but as I continued to read it, I found that I really liked the way that the book was written. The author made the book into basically one big flash back with a few glimpses for the present, talking about how he was able to acquire some of the information for the book. Alot of the beginning half of the book seemed to be  basically letting you know about the technical things behind card counting (all the math). But the beginning of the book also reveals all of the main characters of the book one by one in chronological order.

I liked how the book was separated into chapters by specific dates of important events in the main character's life. For example, his first time meeting the blackjack team, his first trip to Vegas, etc. and with each event the author made sure to give explicit details of the scenery and the thought and feeling for the main character whose name was Kevin. The whole book basically centered around and is told in third person except for the chapter when we as the readers are placed back into the present , and in these chapters the author is the one whose perspective is being shown and it is also shown in the first person.

I appreciated how the author made sure that the book was very action packed. There were lots of scenes within the book which were full of violence where I could also feel the fears of the main character jumping out at me because the great detail that the author gave when describing the set-up of the scene and the emotions of the main characters. The author also used dialogue to set the mood and tone of the chapter , showing rising tensions though arguments and witty banter.