I’ll pretty much read whatever Chuck Klosterman puts out. I know what I’m getting, it’s pop culture cake with highbrow frosting, but dammit, who doesn’t like cake? It’s also not as easy to pull off as even Klosterman himself joked in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by giving the formula for writing his pieces. Many seemed to take that as a recipe rather than a joke; I’m thinking particularly of cannonball nine book club selection Life Goes Pretty Fast, you can’t just overthink pop culture and get a book deal out of it.
Anyway, this is a collection of previously published short pieces by Klosterman, and as such, were even more familiar than usual. I’m pretty sure I’ve read a few before, but that hardly matters. I enjoyed every word, and breezed through it fairly quickly. It is also one of the rare books to make me laugh out loud, even if the joke that did so was roughly the same as another Klosterman book’s (making reference to Nickleback’s “in your mouth” being about some unknown subject – possibly dentistry school? – isn’t functionally different from pointing out that Kiss’ “fits like a glove” might not be about hand warmers.) But I don’t care. I’ll read this stuff over and over. I can’t wait for klosterman’s next iteration of this book.