Of all things Geek. I am…
I decided to pick up Downtown Owl again. I originally read it much closer to its release in 2008 for two reasons. First, Klosterman is an author whom I enjoy, and because I want to include a review or an essay on each of his works on this blog I was surprised that I hadn’t reviewed Downtown Owl before. Considering that I read it before this blog started, that makes a ton of sense.
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Let’s start with the cover, the inside cover, because using those words to describe the book seems better than making something up with different words that mean the same thing.
“But What If We’re Wrong? is a book of original, reported, interconnected pieces, which speculates on the likelihood that many universally accepted, deeply ingrained cultural and scientific beliefs will someday seem absurd.”
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Believe it or not, the opening line of a book can truly shape the entire experience of reading it. Much like the opening scene to a movie, an author can choose to bring us straight into the action or build a slowly burning sense of purpose through their words.
With that in mind, I wanted to discuss the 12 best opening lines from books I’ve recently read, but I had a decision to make before I got started. I wasn’t sure what the criteria should be. Should it be the prologue, for those that have a prologue, or should it be the first line from chapter one because all of them had a chapter one?
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I have finally read Chuck Klosterman’s debut book, Fargo Rocks City and it was everything I thought it would be.
I understand that as a fan of Klosterman’s work, it is a bit odd that I picked up his sophomore effort Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto and then went on to read and own every other book he has published, save for his debut.
Well, I have remedied that mistake and his debut is on par with the wit and pop culture furnishings that I’ve become accustomed to.
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He’s written fiction, non-fiction, and essays about music, death, history and pop culture, but now Chuck Klosterman has turned his attention to villains with I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined), a book published on July 9th, 2013 and reprinted in paperback on July 1st, 2014.
Before we get into the book, let’s first look at the definition of the word villain, a noun. According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, Villain is “a character in a story, movie, etc., who does bad things,” “a person who does bad things,” and “someone or something that is blamed for a particular problem or difficulty.”
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