This Book Will Change Your Life - Sophomoric Philosophy by Victor David Giron.

Small town life. Parties. Drugs. Listening to music. Hooking-up. Getting out. Coming back. Coming of age. These are stories we know. Stories we live. And stories that writers, not to mention filmmakers, hello Dazed and Confused, are inevitably drawn to as they mine what they know in attempt to create art and find their voice. Into this universe comes the latest edition to this genre, Sophomoric Philosophy by Chicago's own Victor David Giron, a recent podcastee over at the This Podcast Will Change Your Life division. Victor knows small towns, and definitely knows drugs and chicks. He also knows what we listened to, watched and read in the eighties and nineties, adding a layer of time and place that is both uniquely Chicagoland and full of pop culture awareness. All of this is done with wit and nuance, but what allows Victor and this novel to transcend, and expand, on the genre is not only the exploration of the immigrant experience, specifically being first generation Americans navigating American culture, and frankly the sense that this is where literature is heading, because this is where the world is heading, but the idea that all of these kids are dropped into these small towns and even as they try to determine what their relationship will be to their parent's places of origin they still chase girls, take drugs and behave like total idiots, in essence like everyone else, imagine.