Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile
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4.2 • 133 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
CITYBOY is Geraint Anderson's bestselling exposé of life in the City of London.
In this no-holds-barred, warts-and-all account of life in London's financial heartland, Cityboy breaks the Square Mile's code of silence, revealing tricks of the trade and the corrupt, murky underbelly at the heart of life in the City. Drawing on his experience as a young analyst in a major investment bank, the six-figure bonuses, monstrous egos, and the everyday culture of verbal and substance abuse that fuels the world's money markets are brutally exposed as Cityboy describes his ascent up the hierarchy of this intensely competitive and morally dubious industry, and how it almost cost him his sanity.
Customer Reviews
Very good
Funny, entertaining and interesting. It was good to read how life in the financial sector is after you've heard about the rumours of excessive pay in the square mile.
Aspiring Differently
Excellent read, I share most thoughts and characteristics with the books main character and now plane to aspire differently
Terrible waste of time
If this book was a stock it would garner a 'sell' classification. Here's why:
Incredibly irritating overuse of stupid, generic metaphors.
Generally smug, unfunny and embarrassingly cliche.
Being scandalised by people's biased preconceptions of the Author as being working class, yet treating every public schoolboy as dim, entitled and arrogant, showing us the very same traits.
Being symptomatic of the worst parts of the City while clearly believing this juvenile, putrid tell-all absolves him of making the same transgressions against decent and truthful business conduct.
Making out that the only way to get ahead is to cater for the seedier elements of his clients' interests so as to go up the rankings. This might be the case if you are particularly thick, but it's actually possible to do a good job and get recognised as such (something the Author misses).
In short, what you have here is a grimy, sour, unintelligent loser that wholly represents the grubby version of the City that people rightfully detest, whose only achievement in writing this book is to muddy the waters for many industry workers who actually do an incredibly worthwhile job. In his cowardly assessment of an industry he so enthusiastically worked in for a number of years, he does nothing to absolve himself or convince us that he has anything approaching an insightful view. A 10 year-old could write this book having watched the Wolf of Wall Street with considerably better observational humour.
In summary- if you want to read a book that plays as a generic, tedious and unfunny D-version of the Wolf of Wall Street, this is for you. I guarantee you'll be more stupid for having read it.