Of Grunge And Government: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy!

by Krist Novoselic
RDV Books/Akashic Books
akashicbooks.com

Some of you may be aware of the fact that Krist Novoselic, best known as the bassist for Nirvana, has been quite active in politics in recent years. He’s certainly not the first rock star to do so, but he may be one of the few who actually wrote an entire book about his or her political stance.

The book is rather thin, barely over a hundred pages, not more than an hour or two of your time even if you’re a slow reader. Even so, our mission here is voice our humble opinion about this and that so you may refer to it when you’re trying to spend your money wisely. As the back cover writes, it is “one part memoir, one part political platform” where Novoselic tries to tie his Nirvana past and his political views. Unfortunately, the book comes up short on both ends. The narrative stories are not nearly as interesting as ones you’d find in bona fide Nirvana bios that already saturate the market. The political views are laid out crystal clear for sure, but he doesn’t seem to have the ability to argue and support his opinions in an intelligent manner.

I agree with many points that he raised, especially about the flaws of the current election system. However, I doubt if he’d be able to convince anyone who didn’t agree with him to begin with as I did. Was he pressed to condense his thoughts into a hundred pages? It’s rather unfortunate as he does raise some interesting points that could’ve really made the book with some back-up argument and better writing. Perhaps his second book will show us more of him than “that guy from Nirvana who became a politician.”



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