"I tell you what’s really ridiculous—going into a bookstore and there’s all these books about yourself. In a way, it feels like you’re already dead..."
—Thom Yorke

Well, this one was disappointing... I love reading books about music and musicians, and the description of this one sounded interesting enough. Unfortunately, the book was a disjointed mess.

Author Charles John Klosterman is an American writer and essayist whose work focuses on American popular culture. He has been a columnist for Esquire and ESPN.com.

n  Chuck Klosterman:n
n  n

The book begins with some very strange writing. Missing a proper introduction; the writing early on was both way too long, as well as very poorly done. Klosterman talks about a woman he is in love with that's not reciprocal for much more time than it's worth. WTF?! What does this have to do with the story here? This would be a harbinger of the rest of the writing that was to follow...

Klosterman mentions the murder of Nancy Spungen by Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols in the Chelsea Hotel early on, before jumping into a long diatribe about his interests in two different women. WTF (again).

Unfortunately, things don't get better as the book goes along. There is lots of rambling writing, with little to no concern for cohesion, and/or clarity. Most of the writing here is pretty much the inner monologue of the author for the duration. The reader is treated to all his neurotic thoughts, as well as contemplations of the women that he'd like to sleep with. Stuff that is completely detached from the subject matter of the book. A terrible presentation...

Finally, the book contains little to no actual useful information. The different sites he travels to are mentioned almost as afterthoughts, and then it's back to his never-ending rambling inner monologue, and irrelevant interactions with the people he meets along the way.

***********************

Despite being excited to start this one, it ended up being a colossal disappointment. The writing here is absolutely abysmal.
This left me seriously wondering how the hell this book was published in the first place. It reads like the incoherent ramblings of a borderline street preacher...
If it were any longer, I would have put it down. Remind me to never read anything else by this author ever again.
I rarely ever rate books 1 star, but this one is not deserving of any better...
1 star, and off to the return bin with this hot mess.

Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, and a road trip. Where you find these elements together, you will find Chuck Klosterman. What can I say? I ‘get’ Klosterman, insomuch as you can get a snarky music junkie who writes about his confusions about the world. I’m still not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, but I’m going for to opt for “good.” Klosterman can always make me laugh, a rare feat in my reading and viewing experiences. So, go! Read some Klosterman.

I was disappointed. Klosterman has always been a super self-aware writer making interesting commentary on pop culture, often bringing a philosphical element that I certainly haven't seen before, but this goes to levels of ridiculousness in this book.

On the surface this looks like an interesting story (85% of a true one) that involves his search for the sites where rock stars died - the assignment was for an article, but as his cross country search wears on, he finds he can only think about the women in his life and how they remind him of members of the band KISS.

I have trouble deciding if the chapter where these women have an imaginary argument with him, where one even says that they all speak in his voice in his syntax because he's the one controlling / editing the whole conversation, was brilliant(and I didn't really get it), or if it was simply tedious.

This all might have been a very satisfying read for someone else (perhaps someone who knows more about rock & roll), but not for me.

If you want to learn about dead musicians and how they died, look elsewhere. 1/3 Into this book and I still haven't learned a thing. The title of this book should be My Boring Life - it is all irrelevant rambles on the author's friends, relationships, drug use, and work. I decided to pull the plug during a part in the book where he says, "I wonder how long it would take someone to find me if I died on top of this hill and who would care. Tommy would call Billy who would call Timmy would call Suzy who would call..." STFU

There's really nothing I could say about this book that would make it sound appealing to anyone other than thirtysomething music nerds. Klosterman – on assignment from Spin magazine – travels cross-country visiting some of music most infamous death sites. In the course of his travels he ruminates on life, love, and KISS. Klosterman's takes on pop culture are unfailingly funny, usually right on the mark, and more often than not reflect things I wish I had said myself. The whole book was like catnip to me – but then again, I'm a thirtysomething music nerd.

Killing Yourself to Live was a very enjoyable quick read, it's a nice book to read on a Sunday afternoon when you just want to relax at home with a cup of coffee or tea, or when you're on an airplane or train. This is the kind of book that you read when you have nothing else to do and you want to be entertained. Ultimately though, your personal enjoyment of the book will be dictated by whether or not you feel like you would want to be friends with Chuck Klosterman-- because the book is saturated with his own personal experience and opinions, interspersed with tidbits of rock history. I think that i I knew Chuck Klosteman in real life he would be like a friend of a friend who I talk to at parties and find mildly likable, but who I have no real connection with, which is why I gave the book 3 stars. If you were to read this book and feel like you could actually be friends with or fall in love with Klosterman than you will probably like it more, and if on the other hand you read this book and think that Klosterman's worldview is so diametrically opposed to yours that he would be the type of person than you would silently resent or hate, or want to beat the shit out of, then you will probably not enjoy this book.

Overall I found it okay, at times when he gets into details of some of the music or the music as it relates to the women he loved it becomes too much for me.

I LOVED THIS!!!!!

The whole time I am reading this book I am thinking it is part Elizabethtown road trip scene, part High Fidelity, and part On The Road. Truth is … I don’t really enjoy reading about recreational drug use or about failed relationships. Turns out I wasn’t far off given the comments made on the last page of the book.

All that said, I’ll probably read another of his books.

I'm really glad that I went through this in this particular phase of my life. It mainly revolves around punk rock and death but it also has several intertwined romance plots too, which constitute equal interests. I also enjoyed it as a travel memoir, meeting people and contemplating death and music as we've always strived to understand it with our own romantic frustrations and yet so romantic. I don't agree about everything Chuck says, but I believe that he has a fascinating and erudite perspective of whatever he talks about. And this work consists of a plethora of criticism about labels and quite interesting films too. Overall, I believe Chuck to be a fine rock critic, although I don't always agree with his ratings.

Well, I was in a heavy metal phase but now I feel like diverting to Audioslave and Alice in Chains.

The music industry has more than its fair share of interesting stories to tell. And some of the most intriguing might be those involving the deaths of iconic musicians. Spin reporter/editor Chuck Klosterman details his quest to uncover these stories in this book. However, the book does not necessarily contain all his discoveries… those were reserved for his articles in Spin. Killing Yourself to Live focuses more on the time he spends examining his own life and relationships in terms of the musicians whose stories he is hunting down all over the country. And, we, as readers, are invited along for the ride. The look into Klosterman’s life is almost as interesting as the stories he is chasing down himself and, while you may not be able to relate entirely to what he says, there are certain to be little pieces of his life story that you can see in your own life and actions.

Ibland, ganska ofta, maler Chuck på om nåt helt sjukt tråkigt band som jag aldrig kommer orka googla och det känns som om ögonlocken blir tyngre och tyngre
men så
BAM
skriver han nåt som är SÅ KUL eller SÅ SANT.

Så man förlåter honom. Sen börjar det om igen med nåt annat band.