The Summer of Read

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (2004), Chuck Klosterman

I just finished reading A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, which really made me want read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (pretty much immediately). Lucky for me a good friend of mine just happens to own it, and is now letting me borrow it. I’m already 100 pages in!

A Dance with Dragons (2011), George R.R. Martin

I’m finally getting into the 5th and latest book in the A Song of Fire and Ice series, which I started last summer. I actually started reading it a few months ago, but caught up with school, and finals, and my thesis so it’s been on the back burner since then. I’m excited to see where this book takes the story, but also nervous to finish it since Season 2 of Game of Thrones is finishing up on Sunday and who knows when the next book in the series will be out. How will I get my GoT fix when I’m done?

On the Queue: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), Cormac McCarthy

Disclaimer: Okay, it didn’t actually take me that long to finish this book. I accidentally left it in a friend’s car a few weeks ago, and only got it back on Friday. In any case, I am finally finished with it. 

Overall thoughts: The book is a collection of articles and essays Klosterman has written (many were featured in magazines like Esquire, Spin, Rolling Stone, etc…). Some pieces were better than others, but overall a great collection that spans a variety of pop culture topics (music, movies, celebrities, random thoughts, etc…). I really enjoyed Klosterman’s writing; it can be hilariously self-deprecating and incredibly sincere all at the same time. Now I want to read Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

Choice pieces: 

• “In The Beginning, There was Zoso”/”Not A Whole Lotta Love” (companion pieces about Led Zeppelin and an interview with Robert Plant)
• “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (about the annual goth infiltration of Disneyland called Bats Day)
• “Nemesis” (essay addressing the necessity of having both a nemesis and archenemy, and the difference between the two)
• “Don’t Look Back In Anger” (in which Klosterman compares Kevin Arnold’s need to be liked in The Wonder Years to the American obsession with having foreign countries like us)
• “Not Guilty” (about the non-guilt one should feel about guilty pleasures)
• “Certain Rock Bands You Probably Like” (Klosterman compiles “The Ten Most Accurately Rated Artists in Rock History!”)

Sweet quotes:

• “I realize there are problems with America, and I’m not necessarily sure if the United States is a good place or a bad place. But the reality behind those problems has no relationship to whether or not France (or Turkey, or Winnie Cooper) thinks we’re cool. They can like us, that like us like us, or they can hate us. But that is their problem, not ours. (“Don’t Look Back In Anger,” 257). 
• “The Beatles are generally seen as the single most important rock band of all time, allegedly because they wrote all the best songs. Since both of these suppositions are true, the Beatles are rated properly by everyone.” (“Certain Rock Bands You Probably Like,” (281).