I truly don’t intend to be judgmental in my review of this short story. It was not for me. I don’t mind the language or sexual content and I respect peoples’ lifestyle choices. I found the plot boring and immature. I received this as a free Audible original ages ago. It has a full cast of narrators that was mediocre. I was expecting it to be more of a dark mystery. I bailed pretty quickly. This just isn’t a story I want to spend my time with. ( )

This is my second audiobook by Jon Ronson focused on some aspect of the pornography industry and I truly love his style. In The Last Days of August, he digs into the apparent suicide of 23-year-old porn star August Ames. Frankly, this is the only access I plan to have into the business and I'm glad that Ronson and his producer, Lena (not sure of the spelling because it's an audiobook...) spend months tracking people down and interviewing a good many people in an effort to paint a picture of not only the industry as a business, but the people in front of and behind the camera.

Honestly, I find these stories fascinating and love Ronson as a narrator. I'll absolutely keep listening to his stuff. ( )

A deeply sad story that starts out feeling like it will be Serial for the Porn industry and instead ends up as something much more tragic and mundane. For whereas Adnan ended up in a weirdly happy place in prison, everybody here ends up in figurative or mental or emotional prisons, and nothing ends up OK for anybody.

This is the extremely dark (but compulsively listenable - I grabbed at excuses to drive places to ensure I'd finish listening to it the same day I started), very human counterpoint to the DFW/Glen Kenny essay "Big Red Son" (originally published in Premiere as "Neither Adult nor Entertainment".) It's rare that DFW gets out-empathied, but this does that. ( )

Free Audible Original about a porn star who was "bullied to suicide" on social media, but seems to have had a lot of other trauma and dysfunction in her interpersonal relationships. Not really that surprising. ( )

Interesting stuff. ( )