Book Review: Be More Pirate by Sam Conniff Allende

I first heard of Allende's Be More Pirate while watching a Netflix documentary on pirates. It was one of those ones I hate, where they show a scripted story and then slam it to a dead halt by bringing in talking heads. Most of the talking heads were professors or writers of pirate histories, but Allende's book sounded a little different. I looked it up, and it was said to be an overview of pirate history, with an emphasis on lessons we could take from them and apply to our own lives.

"What a great idea!" I thought.

I still think it's a great idea. It's only an idea, though, because this book isn't it.

This book is instead a self-help book of business skills (which I'm sure you could apply to family life, social life, etc....but mostly business) with pirates shoe-horned in. While Allende details his pirate cred at the beginning of the book, there's very little pirate content, and lots and lots of talking about things you should do to get ahead in business. There's also, apparently, blank pages for you to fill in (if you're not reading this on a Kindle), which brings to mind Brian's slap-dash self-help book from Family Guy.

The weak connection between pirates and these life lessons were never more apparent than in the chapter about the Pirate Code. Allende highlights a few points from three different pirate codes, points like "If you swindle a fellow pirate out of his earnings you will be marooned" and "If you lose a limb in combat you get extra pay". He then says to use that as inspiration to write down your own personal Pirate Code. He then gives us his own code as an example, which is comprised of PARAGRAPHS on things like "I'm allowed to be creative!" and "I earned the right to be happy!". Queen Anne's Revenge this ain't.

Allende does have a couple of interesting points in the few pages where he actually talks about pirates. One of the points he makes is that pirates controlled their own stories - up to a certain point. Pirates used stories and colors and costumes to draw attention to the fact that they were bloodthirsty fighters to the death - distinctly so they could keep out of fights (as they couldn't afford to keep replacing bullets and weaponry or patching up their boats). So, therefore, control your own narrative! The other part about controlling your own story, though, is that the final verdict goes to the victors, which in this case was the navy. Allende tries to make the point that most pirates were good people just trying to make a living (which...okay?), but over time the governments of the world wrote their histories to turn them into enemies of humanity. So, then, don't be like pirates I guess?

Anyway, this was not a very enjoyable book - only four out of ten hot dogs.