Book Review #1

I have embarked on a journey for 2007 to read more. In the past I have set some goals as to the number of books that I hoped to read in the coming year and I would end up blowing it big time. This year the idea is to read more books, and the hope is that I’ll read all sorts of books.

The first book I finished this year was Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs:: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman. I remember picking this book up off the “new arrival” table at Borders about a year or two ago and thought it looked interesting, but I wasn’t about to pay the cost for the hard cover so I put it back and forgot about it. My brother gave me his copy over Christmas and told me that he really enjoyed parts of it and told me he thought I’d like it as well.

According to Wikipedia Klosterman is a pop culture critic, journalist, and essayist who has written for SPIN, ESPN’s Page 2, and Esquire. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is basically a collection of some his best works that takes close looks at some of the most important pop culture standards of my young life.

Klosterman covers topics from Lakers Fans v. Celtics Fans (which was very interesting what with Celtic fans chanting Kobe’s name the other night), how the Sims video game became such a cultural phenomenon, and how Billy Joel is cool (even though there’s nothing there to make us really think he’s cool). 2 of my favorite 3 essays focus on TV shows that were a huge part of my high school years.

Klosterman talks about how The Real World has ruined everyone that we’ll ever meet under the age of 35. Klosterman recounts how much he loved watching the first season, but as the seasons went on they all started to seem the same. The same characters showed up in each season just played by different people. As time went by though he started noticing that everyone he met started to fill these roles even though there were no cameras around. It’s interesting to think of the cultural impact that a show like this can have on young impressionable teenagers and how it impacts the way they live.

There’s also another great essay about Saved by the Bell. Klosterman states that the reason people were so in love with Saved by the Bell was because it was so predictable and unreal. You always knew that there was some kind of lesson that we were all supposed to learn and that no one, will EVER get in any sort of trouble no matter how bad the hair brained scheme they just pulled off was. It’s interesting because the same reason we loved the Real World is the reason we loved Saved by the Bell. It was the predictability of the two. Even though we didn’t know what was going to happen on The Real World… we knew in much the same way we knew.

The best essay in the book was about the Left Behind book series. Klosterman is not a Christian nor does he have any real religious background. He mentions that he grew up Catholic, but makes very little reference to this and I think that’s what makes this essay the best in the book from my perspective. There’s a very interesting Christian culture that most pastors and Christians intereact with on a regular basis that the rest of the world would not understand and it’s rare that we would ever get to hear what a person outside the Christians circle would say about that culture. He makes a lot of great observations throughout the essay (many are complimentary to people of faith) but the best is regarding the conversion of one of the main characters from the book…

Rayford can’t do this until his life is destroyed, so his conversion isn’t all that remarkable (it actually seems like the most reasonable decision, considering the circumstances). In many ways, this is the book’s most glaring flaw: It demands blind faith from the reader, but it illustrates faith as a response to terror. And since Left Behind isn’t a metaphor – it presents itself as a fictionalized account of what will happen, according to the Book of Revelation – the justification for embracing Jesus mostly seems like a scare tactic.

Klosterman is witty, insightful, and cynical all throughout the pages of this book. I can often get trapped in only reading ministry books or personal spiritual growth books so for me this was a refreshing change that I really enjoyed.

Book Reviews Coming Soon::
Organic Church by Neil Cole
Soul Cravings by Erwin McManus
Just Walk Across the Room by Bill Hybels