The number of typos and other editorial problems make the electronic galley copy unreadable. I got so frustrated that I couldn't finish it.

This book is blah. Very blah. Very self-indulgent. The author is more focused on making long-winded analogies than offering criticism.

Goodbye, Guns N' Roses from Art Tavana is both interesting in many places and horribly self-indulgent throughout. Tavana tries often and fails consistently to be either humorous or insightful.

On the positive side there is a good bit of information in the book. Unfortunately, one has to wade through a lot of weak analogies to other works (literature, movies, whatever his friends apparently mentioned to him that got stuck) that try desperately to be incisive and present the band and/or the individuals within some larger intellectual perspective. If Tavana was half as smart as he thinks he is this would have been a decent book. But the flaws in thought and the absurd (not as in absurdist, that would imply a unifying logic) connections he tries to make that don't work make this something that even my freshman students would have been ashamed to turn in.

I usually don't mention typos or grammar mistakes or missing words in review copies because they are usually few and far between and will be corrected by publication. But this is so full of every type of mistake imaginable that it is worth mentioning. Once published, I am sure most will have been corrected, but there are so many that there is a fair chance many will make it through. So check a physical copy before shelling out good money for this joker's high school paper turned into a book.

I only recommend this to diehard GNR fans who simply have to collect everything, no matter the stench. If you can borrow a copy it can offer some good information, but just be prepared for an amateur theorist to be writing way over his head between those interesting tidbits.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.