A good number of the books I read during college were boring, tedious collections of words and pages that quickly found their way into a recycling bin or onto some dark shelf never to be heard from again upon completion. Dan Kennedy‘s Loser Goes First was no such book.
Subtitled My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation, LGF tracks Kennedy’s hilarious missteps through life, never sparing the cringe inducing details and providing belly-busting laughs with every turn of the page. LGF is without question the funniest book I have ever read, yet one that I’m hesitant to read in public because of the number of laugh-out-loud moments it provides (still) even after my having read it a half-dozen or more times.
From the dust jacket: “If you’ve ever tried and failed miserably at being a rock star (no guitar/talent), a professional bass fisherman, an extra in the movie Sleepless in Seattle (guy drinking martini in a bar while Tom Hanks makes a phone call), a Madison Avenue advertising executive, a clerk/towel person at a suburban health club (named Kangaroo Kourts), an espress street-cart owner and operator (in the one neighborhood of that coffee-swilling town, Seattle, where remarkably, no one really seems to drink coffee), a dot.com millionaire, an MTV VJ, or a forest fire fighter, this book is for you.”