I read this book solely because it’s been made into a movie starring Michael Cera (and all his awkward greatness). 

And I can honestly say it was just okay. Like a 6-7 out of 10. I should’ve known something was up when both of the title characters’ names started with the same letter.. or that it’s a teen novel (but Holes was good, wasn’t it?). It’s something along the similar lines of Juno (in my opinion), where you expect it to be great.. but it’s only just okay for what it is. 

I hope the movie is better than the book (even though that’s rarely the case). 

I first read this during my sophomore year of high school, and it’s the book I recommend most often to good friends of mine (who actually read). The only downside of this book is the task of getting it back from the people I lend it to.

 Here is a lovely excerpt (taking note of the holiday today):

 ’Fake love is a very powerful thing. That girl who adored John Cusack once had the opportunity to spend a weekend with me in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria, but she elected to fly to Portland instead to see the first U.S. appearance by Coldplay, a British pop group whose success derives from their ability to write melodramatic alt-rock songs about fake love. It does not matter that Coldplay is absolutely the shittiest fucking band I’ve ever heard in my entire fucking life, or that they sound like a mediocre photocopy of Travis (who sound like a mediocre copy of Radiohead), or that their greatest fucking artistic achievement is a video where their blandly attractive frontman walks on a beach on a cloudy fucking afternoon. None of that matters. What matters is that Coldplay manufactures fake love as frenetically as the Ford fucking Motor Company manufactures Mustangs, and that’s all this woman heard. “For you I bleed myself dry,” sang their block head vocalist, brilliant informing us that stars in the sky are, in fact, yellow. How am I going to compete with that shit? That sleepy-eyed bozo isn’t even making sense. He’s just pouring fabricated emotions over four gloomy guitar chords, and it ends up sounding like love. And what does that mean? It means she flies to fucking Portland to hear 2 hours of amateurish U.K. hyperslop, and I sleep alone in a $270 hotel in Manhattan, and I hope Coldplay gets fucking dropped by fucking EMI and ends up like the Stone fucking Roses, who were actually a better fucking band, all things considered.’

-Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (2003)

 Do yourself a favor and read this book. You won’t regret it.