I started reviewing Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs a while ago. It got so long I decided I could write a series of posts on or inspired by the book. Like anything that ambitious, I eventually realized it’s too much work and I should just write a succinct review. I just tried that and I still fell short. See, my aim is to get you to buy the book, and just not for the pennies I might get from an affiliate sale, but because I think it’s awesome. So here’s why you need to buy it:

1. It’s laugh out loud funny and never boring.
2. It’s insightful on many interesting topics, assuming you find our culture remotely interesting.
3. Its chapters are pretty unrelated, and broken into subchapters and sidebars, so you can pick it up and put it down easily.
4. Wherever you go with it, people ask you about it. Often female people. It makes you look cool (or at least interesting).

Basically, if you know anyone like me, buy it for them for Christmas or Hanukkah or something. They will love it.¹

If you’re still not sold, here’s an excerpt I feel is fairly representative:

My obsession with serial killers began when I was ten years old. My fourth-grade teacher told our class that we should never hitchhike, because the only people who picked up hitchhikers were perverted serial killers. This advice was complicated by what my fifth-grade teacher told us the following year; she said that we would all have driver’s licenses in a few years, and the one rule we always needed to remember was never to pick up hitchhikers. This was because all the hitchhikers were serial killers. According to what I learned in public school, every person on every freeway was trolling for destruction. I used to imagine nomadic, sadistic drifters thumbing rides with bloodthirsty Volkswagen owners, both desperately waiting for the first opportunity to kill each other. Hitchhiking seemed like an ultraviolent race against time.

1. Thanks again, Doubledeuce! [↩]