This book was on my radar in late 2014 and just by chance my reserved copy from the library came along at just the right time, so it's officially my first deviation from #ReadWomen2014. I have nothing profound to say about the difference between books by men and books by women; I read many great books in 2014, and I expect I will read many more in 2015, regardless of the gender of the author. What I will say is that this one reminded me of how pleasurable it can be to browse and select a random book, your long to-be-read list be damned.

This book is far from perfect -- John Safran comes across a bit as the Australian equivalent of Michael Moore, and if I had known anything about his television career, I probably wouldn't have picked this up. It is a heavy-handed as a true crime book can be, with Safran very self-consciously thinking about his role in the pantheon of true crime writers like Truman Capote. Granted, he does this with self-effacing charm, but there is a decided cuteness to the whole thing, and if you dislike Safran's personality, you'll truly hate the book because he is as large a character as anyone else.

One other complaint -- I had a hard time stomaching comments on race in America (the true crime in question is the murder of a White Supremacist in Mississippi) coming from an Australian. It's very easy to be cynical and sarcastic about race in the Deep South, which is obviously ridiculous, but I found his outsider perspective to be unwelcome. It felt like a big piece of the puzzle was missing because of Safran's inability to understand or contextualize something so deeply rooted in our national psyche, although he certainly tried.

This sounds like I haven't enjoyed the book, which is definitely not the case. I swallowed it down in a few sittings and I couldn't really read it fast enough. I find that the characters have really stuck with me more than I ever could have anticipated, and I was surprised by how much it made me laugh.