The Pistol Poets, by Victor Gischler

For the past two months I've been in this sort of post graduate-school ADD phase. I can't even read the entire back of a cereal box without getting a headache. Seriously...I start reading a book, get to page 3, and put it down.

Until, that is, I picked up The Pistol Poets, by Victor Gischler. I've read 60 pages in two days. For me, that's a miracle. Kind of like a smoker going an entire day without a cigarette. And unless Gischler does something in the next 200 pages to really bore me or piss me off, I think I've found my new favorite author.

I won't get overly detailed with my description of his stuff (I'm already losing interest in this blog post...what's on TV?), but suffice it to say, he writes in a funny, sarcastic, easy-going style that isn't too self-consciously funny or sarcastic. This particular book is also about academia, and features complete low-life, bottom-dwellers as its main characters. And let's face it, who likes to read about the clean-cut, All-American do-gooders that Ayn Rand writes about? Okay...maybe we all did for a minute or two in college, during our Ayn Rand phases. But now, as an adult, I'd much rather read about characters like these: flawed, desperate, bumbling from one bad move to the next and hoping some good luck will come out of the sky.

Seriously, if you like funny, crime, pulp-ish kind of stuff with a modern-day edge to it, this is for you. What's cool is also that Gischler's characters have a bit of that off-the-wall, cartoon-ish kind of Guy Ritchie movie feel to them. Sort of like they're too exaggerated to actually exist in real life, but so what?

Give him a try...seriously.