Carp Fishing on Valium

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: A collection of random, boring, and poorly written vignettes. I guess Parker's clout as a recording artist helped him land a publisher. It surely wasn't his talent. The title and cover art are the best parts...

Rating:
Summary: Starts OK, Goes Astray
Review: I started reading this as a beach book and I enjoyed the first, maybe, eight stories. The stories about his childhood and adolescence were charming and well-written. I had to put this book down, though, when Parker strayed into the dreaded "live out my unfulfilled rock fantasy" territory. Vignettes are interesting. Reading about some obscure rocker's fantasy to sing with the Stones via a self-gratifying, markedly unclever writing style is *not* interesting. If you must buy this book, tear out the last few chapters before you read it.

Rating:
Summary: Clever Name. Bad Book.
Review: Maybe it's just my fast paced brain, but I found that this book often read like a transcript of a conversation between completely uninteresting people. It's slow, it's confusing, and often consists of almost incoherent conversations between people who cuss at each other a lot.

Fans of Graham Parker may find me harsh, and if you're a fan of Graham Parker you may want to give it a try. For me, the book just didn't live up to the clever title.