The non-fiction book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman is a book full of essays about pop culture in America. From writing about the reality TV show Real World to the Sims computer game, Klosterman shares his opinions and theories about how they connect to real lives and the world today.
This book is written in first person and Chuck Klosterman has more defined opinions about more subjects then I have ever seen before. I would compare him to one of those students in class that will make an opinion about every single topic and talk about it incessantly until you just want to turn and punch them in the face. The kind of person who is so single minded and so unwilling to change what they don’t like about their life, so they just make excuses. I see this a lot in the book when Klosterman keeps bringing back past relationships and why he will never fall in love, and his reasoning seems to have a pretty easy solution. It’s just he has to care enough to make a few small changes.
Klosterman’s essays were written for young adults to late twenties. To understand some of the references, or artists he is talking about you would need to be at least around the age of fifteen, but I would say thats even a little young when it talks about certain bands/artists, like Billy Joel and the Beatles. Or the first episodes of the TV show Real World.
Klosterman is very clear about how he views things in life. He uses a wide range of vocabulary from swearwords to higher level vocabulary words to express himself. He uses a lot of comparison in his writing. The comparison is usually between something in pop culture and his life experiences. Klosterman wrote this book to show people how many things we mindlessly watch, listen to, or participate in and never realize how directly is affects our life. The whole time I read this book, I felt like Klosterman wrote this book with a very angry and bitter tone.
Overall this book is a hit or miss book, depending on if you like feeling like someone is trying to drill their opinion into your head. I think the way he looks at life is very interesting and how he finds ways to connect things such as Sims to real life is something not many people can do. If the approach had been different, and the essays hadn’t all been separate I would have enjoyed this book more. This book is five Teen Vogues out of 10.
