Killing Yourself to Live (2005)

Sometimes when you're the co-pilot on a road trip, you're having such a good time talking to your buddy, gazing out the window, and listening to awesome music that you're a little reluctant to stop and get out when you actually reach your destination. That's what reading this book is like. Chuck Klosterman — the frequently brilliant and occasionally infuriating magazine writer who penned 2003's collection Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs — narrates his solo 6,557-mile journey to the sites of famous rock & roll deaths. But his musings on dead rockers are less mesmerizing than his virtuosic open-road ramblings on girlfriends, Kiss, cocaine, Radiohead's Kid A, his family in North Dakota, and much more. Klosterman might be headed for Hornby, Eggers, and Sedaris status; Killing Yourself to Live should be his breakout book.