2013 Book 4: Fargo Rock City - Chuck Klosterman

Remember how I read the last book in 2 sittings?? This was the complete opposite. This was a relatively short book. This took me forever to read. I happen to love Chuck Klosterman. Marley got me hooked on him a couple of years ago, and I've enjoyed pretty much everything of his I've read. This was a little different.

However, I'm not saying I didn't like it, but it was definitely the hardest for me to get into, and the lowest ranking of all his books (that I've read). I think my biggest issue with this book was my expectations of it. Fargo Rock City is a book about metal music. (For those of you who don't know, Chuck is both a music and sports journalist, which is what I find so interesting about him - he is very knowledgable on both ends, and I enjoy his perspectives on both.) I think I wanted a history of metal out of this, and there was definitely a bit of that. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is semi-interested or semi-informed on metal music to begin with.

Being a child of the 80s (specifically a child of parents who were teenagers in the 80s and therefore raised on the 80s) I was pretty familiar with a lot - probably most - of the bands mentioned. However, Klosterman is always name dropping (which once in awhile gets obnoxiously pretentious) so there were a lot of mentions about obscure metal bands, which I would have loved to know more about, but Klosterman just never went there. I'm guessing that I was not Klosterman's target demographic in writing this, and I think now that I'm finished with the book, I'm feeling okay with that.

One of my favorite things about reading Chuck Klosterman is his anecdotes - they almost always seem perfectly placed, perfectly relatable, but perfectly individual all at once. And that quality definitely saved my impression of this book. I was most impressed with the last 1/3 to 1/4 of the book (which is a perfect example of why I always finish a book I've started.)* It's in the end that Klosterman kind of brings everything back together and ties it in to his life.

And to end, my chosen quote has nothing to do with metal music at all, but I thought it was funny and true.

"Booze is the greatest of all equalizers. Rich drunks and poor drunks both pass out the same way."

*There is one book that I started reading that I haven't (yet) finished. (For some reason I feel an obligation to tell you all.) I started reading We Were the Mulvaney's probably 7 or 8 years ago, and I just couldn't get into it and I still haven't finished and I feel inexplicably awful about it to this day. Which means I'll probably get around to finishing, or rather re-starting, it eventually.