I Hate Your Guts

This was one of only two books I finished during last weekend's 18-hour road trip. I packed five or six books for the trip, in addition to a couple of handheld games. Yet I never touched my DS or GameBoy, and only spent a few hours reading. What gave? A number of factors. For one, half of our travel was done after nightfall, giving me only 9 or so true hours to read. Even during these hours, I often simply listened to my iPod, talked with my family, or admired the somewhat scenic rural views. I also fell asleep once or twice. In general, the trip was a failure, in terms of making any real backlog progress. In every other aspect, it was a success, an awesome time, and a lot of fun. But this is not a travel blog. This is Back-Blogged. I will not bore any potential readers with the details of my trip; instead, I'll bore them with mundane mini-reviews, like I always have. So let's talk about this book. It is made up of 35 essays by Jim Norton, a stand-up comic and the third mic on the Opie and Anthony Show. This book is far less autobiographical in nature than his first, and also full of much more original (in other words, never before seen) content. Now, I find Norton hilarious and unique when it comes to crafting and delivering a good joke. He is an absolute king of dated low-culture references and self-deprecation. Unfortunately, his talents don't translate quite as well on paper as they do via spoken word. The book was still enjoyable and funny, but I found certain essays to be a bit repetitious and less inspired than others. All things considered, I'd praise the effort and quip that Norton is certainly making strides toward becoming a great comedic author. The thing is though, he's already a terrific comic. It's sort of like when Michael Jordan decided to play baseball or Lindsay Lohan decided to record an album, albeit to a lesser extent. Not everyone has to be amazing at everything, you know? Maybe Norton should stick to radio and stand-up, leaving book-writing alone for a little while. He used to have a blog, and I found it just as good as his spoken material. Perhaps if he picked that back up for a while, and developed his written delivery (much harder than spoken delivery, by far) a little bit more, his abilities would benefit. But now I just feel like I'm shitting on the guy and his book, both of which I respect and enjoy. Any fan of O&A or Norton should pick this up for a read. As for the rest of the world, well, Norton's got a very specific brand of humor, and this book won't be for everyone. But it was for me, and it was an enjoyable way to kill a few car ride hours.