Week 14: Eating The Dinosaur - Chuck Klosterman (256 pages)

This was my first introduction to Chuck Klosterman and his exciting style of writing. A dear friend of mine, Eric, let me know that he was reading and enjoying this book and after struggling through my original book for this week (The Help) - I decided to give this book a try. It is hard to fully describe this book, but basically it is several essays comparing what seem to be disparate subjects. 

Mr. Klosterman is essentially writing a philosophy book - there were times that my head was swimming with information and comparisons and thoughts that I clearly had never thought of before. This is definitely a thinking person's book. That being said - it was very easy to read, and I found most of the essays engaging. Reading about why Weezer fans are generally disappointed with Weezer albums, made me wonder if I was a true fan - since I have not been disappointed with any of their releases. He discusses Twitter, ABBA, David Koresh, Kurt Cobain and the Unabomber amongst many other topics. 

One of my favorite sections of the book was the section about football. Shocking, I know - but Mr. Klosterman was great about making the intricacies easy to understand and then, he did the best thing ever - he broke the fourth wall and gave me, the reader, permission to skip the section all together. Trust me my friends...I skipped ahead to read about ABBA. 

There were many times that I agreed with the author and many times that I thought he was a bit nuts. I really enjoyed the essays on Nirvana and The Branch Davidians, Ralph Sampson, and ABBA. I was intrigued by the others. I had some problems with the weird interview interstitials. Who who was being interviewed, what did those interviews have to do with what I had just finished reading? Outside of that bit of weirdness, this was really a great book.

Thanks to Eric for suggesting it to me.