Fargo Rock City, by Chuck Klosterman

Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota is not what I was expecting it to be. I thought this was going to be more of a memoir, as the title misleadingly suggests. Certainly, each chapter title takes us year by year through the life of a young metalhead from the sticks, but beyond that there's not much memoir there. Sometimes we get a story from his own life, but more often this book is a series of essays on metal.

There are essays on music videos, essays on sexism, essays on why Appetite for Destruction is the best album of all time, and more. At times it all gets a bit tedious, even for a metal fan like myself. However, the author is hilarious and peppers every chapter/essay with numerous witty observations and brilliant one liners. I laughed so much while reading this book that even the less interesting parts were thoroughly enjoyable. 

My Secret History, by Paul Theroux

I found a paperback copy of this book recently and, after having read The Mosquito Coast a few years ago and greatly enjoyed it, I decided to delve into this mammoth work.

At first, I thought it was an autobiography of sorts. From what little I knew about Theroux's work, it all seemed to match up. However, right at the start of My Secret History he takes pains to state that although certain similarities might seem to exist, it's purely a work of fiction. As an author of work of fiction that most readers assumed was autobiographical, I know his pain and will thus take him at his word that this is all made up.

Yet it is deliberately autobiographical-seeming. The novel tells the life of Andre Parent - a writer, would you believe - as he goes through various stages of his life, from boyhood to manhood. Like an autobiography, it is not neat and convenient, with all ends tied up. It is messy and real. Everything about it is entirely believable.

The book is broken into six chapters over the protagonist's life. They jump about a lot in terms of place as Parent moves from America to Africa to England to India, bouncing back and forth in pursuit of something. It is usually women he is after. From an early age, he has an irrepressible appetite for sex. At times he seems morally virtuous like some sort of hero, and elsewhere he utterly reprehensible. He is at times an unreliable narrator, but always an enjoyable one.