I finished Gary Benchley, Rock Star, by Paul Ford, while on a plane to NYC early this week; sorry it took me this long to push other stuff aside so’s I could post on it. The book was loaned to me by DJ Cayenne, and I’ve purposely not read his post on it because I wanted to be able to post with a clean slate (if you can honestly call my “slate” “clean”, but that’s another story).
I absolutely adored the first third of this book. It was non-stop belly laughs, primarily because I am a wannabe rock star at heart just like the title character, and his references to pop culture (specifically music) hit me right in the wheelhouse. I did catch at least one error — referring to Mission of Burma as “Mission to Burma” — but I let that one slide. The bottom line is that the author/title character’s confusion between Sweden and Switzerland in one scene had me laughing so hard in public that my wife hid her face.
After the introduction to our main character was established and we moved more into the story of how he was going to become a rock star, though, the book kind of slowed down for me. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as engaging — it became less social commentary and more story. But as his band goes on tour, the book ramps right back up again and had me cracking up. I think anyone who enjoyed How I Paid for College or Home Land would enjoy this book, and anyone who likes music and pop culture to boot shouldn’t do without it.
Now I’m off to read the DJ’s post.