About a Boy Pseudo-Book-Review-Chuck-Klosterman-Inspired-Rant
Yesterday I read About a Boy (I also finished reading The Old Man and The Sea, but that is a different story AHAHAHAHAHAHahahaha). [Sorry, really]. Last Thurs. I finished Oryx and Crake.
About a Boy was a cute book, but I was somewhat irked by the "moral" or "message" (perhaps my problem here is that I was looking for a moral/message in a Nick Hornby book). This message seems to be "Conform, conform, conform. You are not normal unless you conform." This is perhaps an overstatement and I may be leaning a little heavily toward the Fiona-side of the argument (Fiona = the titular "boy"'s mother). In the end I don't think Fiona (also the book's main nonconformist) came off as a terribly likable character, neither did Clive nor Jessica (the other tragically unhip characters). Of course, whatshisface, the Hugh Grant character, wasn't terribly likable either. Maybe that's my real problem with the book, it was filled with rather unlikeable characters. I mean, whatshisface, the John Cusack character, from High Fidelity was also a jerk, but to me he was a jerk in an endearing way. A way that I understood. John Cusack was a jerk who liked music, Hugh Grant was a jerk who liked stuff -- expensive name brand material stuff. (I really ough to look up these characters real names, I haven't even seen the movie version of About a Boy). Anyway, the book is pretty adorable, especially if you can ignore the "you'll have an easier time with life if you're wearing Adidas sneakers" message. I recommend it for airports, trains, and when you have the most boring job on the face of the earth (aka, sitting in a computer lab for 7 hours straight).
PS The title of this entry goes out to Nathan, my library co-worker. He LJ-stalked me and found my Klosterman oriented bitchfests, then accused me of embodying all the negative qualities I was attributing to Klosterman (though he said it a little more nicely). He's totally right of course.
About a Boy was a cute book, but I was somewhat irked by the "moral" or "message" (perhaps my problem here is that I was looking for a moral/message in a Nick Hornby book). This message seems to be "Conform, conform, conform. You are not normal unless you conform." This is perhaps an overstatement and I may be leaning a little heavily toward the Fiona-side of the argument (Fiona = the titular "boy"'s mother). In the end I don't think Fiona (also the book's main nonconformist) came off as a terribly likable character, neither did Clive nor Jessica (the other tragically unhip characters). Of course, whatshisface, the Hugh Grant character, wasn't terribly likable either. Maybe that's my real problem with the book, it was filled with rather unlikeable characters. I mean, whatshisface, the John Cusack character, from High Fidelity was also a jerk, but to me he was a jerk in an endearing way. A way that I understood. John Cusack was a jerk who liked music, Hugh Grant was a jerk who liked stuff -- expensive name brand material stuff. (I really ough to look up these characters real names, I haven't even seen the movie version of About a Boy). Anyway, the book is pretty adorable, especially if you can ignore the "you'll have an easier time with life if you're wearing Adidas sneakers" message. I recommend it for airports, trains, and when you have the most boring job on the face of the earth (aka, sitting in a computer lab for 7 hours straight).
PS The title of this entry goes out to Nathan, my library co-worker. He LJ-stalked me and found my Klosterman oriented bitchfests, then accused me of embodying all the negative qualities I was attributing to Klosterman (though he said it a little more nicely). He's totally right of course.