{"id":2498,"date":"2013-04-03T20:45:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T00:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=2498"},"modified":"2013-04-04T06:28:04","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T10:28:04","slug":"dan-kennedy-loser-goes-first-crown-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/dan-kennedy-loser-goes-first-crown-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Kennedy, Loser Goes First (Crown, 2003)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dan<\/a>My mind was exhausted. I wasn’t ready for sleep, but I hadn’t the stomach for TV. All the magazines and nonfiction books by my bed were just too much.\u00a0 I need an easy read—easier than any of the few dozen paperback mysteries piled up by my desk.<\/p>\n

And there it was—Dan Kennedy’s Loser Goes First<\/a>. It is a small book, with not small print, and only 223 pages.\u00a0 Start it one night, finish it the next.\u00a0 USATODAY called it ‘laugh out loud funny.”\u00a0 A writer at Salon<\/a> called it “hilarious.”\u00a0 Written by a contributor to the smugly smart McSweeney’s<\/a>, and focused on one man’s foibles—it had to be good. Perfect!\u00a0 I had found a copy in my apartment’s laundry room months ago and the right moment had come to read it.<\/p>\n

Not. I reached page 123 and quit. It just was not very funny. The humor was adolescent by not edgy in the least. It was a slapdish mix of vignettes and bits that read like half-baked comedy monologues. It is one “how stupid I was” story after another, and\u00a0 many of them don’t carry punchlines.<\/p>\n

I hate not finishing books. It is very rare for me not to see one through, especially a short one like this. But I just couldn’t do it. Loser Goes First<\/a> was a bore. Maybe a 17- or even a 22-year old might find it a hoot, but not this 43-year old.\u00a0 I returned it to the laundry room.<\/p>\n

Maybe I will try one of these old crime novels instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My mind was exhausted. I wasn’t ready for sleep, but I hadn’t the stomach for TV. All the magazines and nonfiction books by my bed were just too much.\u00a0 I need an easy read—easier than any of the few dozen paperback mysteries piled up by my desk. And there it was—Dan Kennedy’s Loser Goes First. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[73,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-nonfiction","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-Ei","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2498"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2507,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498\/revisions\/2507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}