I took out On Paradise Drive : how we live now (and always have) in the future tense because I liked the cover. I never read Bobo's, but heard enough about it. I figured, "Why not?"

This evening I got about 50 pages into it before deciding that it wasn't worth it. Brooks states up front that his intent is to use humor to explore his subject (suburbia, I think, and why it isn't as bad as we think it is). His writing is funny in the way that Black Hole Sun is funny. (It isn't.) He paints broad, saturated caricatures that ring hollow. It doesn't sound so much like a recounting as much as a world imagined from the comfort of a coffee shop.

If you are in search of a set of simple generalizations to make sense of North American life, you might enjoy this book. Maybe I expected too much given the amount of press Bobo's got. But I have too many other things to read and do to spend any more time on this.