Old Records Never Die: One Man's Quest for His Vinyl and His Past by Eric Spitznagel

Sure, it's crazy. But Eric Spitznagel decided he didn't just want to recreate his long-gone vinyl music collection - he wanted the EXACT records back. The one with his first girlfriend's phone number on the cover, and the one sporting his brother's threatening note about not borrowing it. The ones will all the familiar, unique pops, skips and scratches.

It's really nuts. But also a little understandable - it's a modern midlife crisis, right?

Spitznagel is funny and that's what makes this doomed quest bearable. He's got a real way with words, and there were times I laughed out loud at his descriptions. And yet there were other times I was physically uncomfortable with his mania - I got embarrassed for him when he was too blinded to realize how dumb he was acting.

There's some language in this book (you were warned), but it's the way guys this age really talk when they're telling you their best stories. It's really a good book, and the audiobook narration by Ramiz Monsef was spot-on.

The Haters by Jesse Andrews

Three teens ditch out of jazz camp to hit the road and try their luck as a band: Wes and Corey are enthusiastic but merely average players on bass and drums - Ash, on the other hand, is exceptional as a blues fusion guitarist and songwriter and singer and instigator and dream girl ...

It's a fantastic road trip book with relatable characters and the kind of accidents and happenstance that occur on an ill-planned youth odyssey. The gang's on-going banter about band names especially rings so, so true.

This book's been getting a lot of press as a hot summer teen fiction release, and it's well worth the time.

VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave by Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, and Martha Quinn with Gavin Edwards

This book is a fun little moonwalk down memory lane for any child of the '80s; the five original VJ's may have been making it up as they went along, but we were certainly along for the joyride, too. I was the perfect age for MTV's early years, and I know these authors as well as any of my real-life preteen friends.

The book's divided up into themed chapters, but each VJ gets their say in bits and bites (remember, they invented our short attention spans). Most of the stories are just a paragraph or two, but some tales take a little more time to tell. And tell tales they do: MTV Spring Break, house parties, and clubbing, along with celebrity crushes and strange behavior. "Diamond" David Lee Roth gets his own chapter because there are so, so many stories.

It's kind of fun to get this behind-the-scenes look at MTV back when it actually was all about the music. I thought it was funny that they setup their own note-libraries about the videos, since they weren't really watching them (how does that one end? what happens in it? silly or serious?).

It's a little choppy in places, what with 4 author voices plus excerpts from the late J.J. Jackson. But that quality also makes this book excellent for pick-it-up-and-put-it-down reading (again, short attention span!).