If you love pop culture references, even esoteric ones that you have to look up, then you are going to love this book! Taylor introduces a wild cast of characters, but you really do care about them and are invested in their story. If this isn't Netflix limited series material, I don't know what is!

An aging millennial manifesto in the form of a faux-memoir that analyzes the world on the axes of celebrity culture, internet conspiracy theories and climate change. Our protagonist and subject is a former young adult actor who sees the world in terms of television scripts and is going for a rebooted TV series, which he believes will reboot his life. Meanwhile, the forces of chaos, in the form of internet conspiracies about this TV show, the video game he does voiceovers for and Jews generally, are working in multiple directions, causing him to try to harness them.to his own benefit. The largest source of chaos, climate change, now rebranded as climate collapse, is doing its thing and holds the trump cards. This is an interesting foray into the nature of truth, now termed Speculative Nonfiction, and triumph of the fringe in the today's world. The laughability of online reality in the face of ecosystem collapse is thoroughly explored. The author is a great writer. Portions were definitely self-indulgent.

I loved the first two thirds of this - the "celebrity memoir" tone, the vaguely DeLillo-ish undertones mixed with modern celebrity culture, the exploration of the multiple ways we try to "reboot" things in the media. I think it slightly fumbles the ending - it gets a little hard to follow where each plot thread is going, and while I liked the imagery of some of the final resolution, I'm not sure if it felt truly _earned_ to me. Still, this was both fun AND funny, and I devoured it in a few sittings.

Recovering alcoholic David Crader starred in a teen drama, Rev Beach, a cross between Dawson’s Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that aired in the early aughts. Nearing middle age, he keeps afloat by tending to his Portland bar, Wing and Prayer, attending fan conventions (“I took home a few grand for a day spent signing autographs and posing for photos and being told how great I was”) and doing voice work on cartoons and video games. During lockdown, David had a dream that led to an idea for a Rev Beach reboot to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the show’s premiere.

David gets his former co-star, and first ex-wife, Grace Travis, the daughter of the show’s creator (who were repeatedly compared to Aaron and Tori Spelling), on board. He is then tasked with assembling the rest of the cast, including Shayne Glade, the young heartthrob whom David met at Rising Star, “an extended-stay hotel full of kids who could sing and tap-dance and launch into monologues at the drop of a hat, watched over by groups of mothers on second mortgages who traded tips about talent agents and drank white wine all afternoon,” and Corey Burch, the “Designated Fat Kid,” whom David and Shayne met when they returned to Rising Star as “sparkly tweens doing one-offs on Nickelodeon sitcoms” to encourage the current residents that “this wasn’t all a pipe dream.”

David bounces around the country trying to court the support of his former cast-mates, but his plans are derailed by the impact of accelerating climate change, from flooding to fires,. In addition, a video game for which David did voice work has spawned an internet conspiracy theory that portends real world violence. Taylor has written a hilarious sendup of Hollywood and pop culture. Thank you Pantheon and Net Galley for this witty satire.

Excellent. This novel rides that rare line wherein you can just as soon put it on your college syllabus as you can recommend it to a friend who simply likes a good book.

As far as recommending it to your friend who reads commercial bestsellers, I would recommend it to friends who recently loved TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW. In his creation of the "rebooted" TV show, and in his creation of/engagement with the gaming world, Taylor does a lot of the clever world-building that Gabrielle Zevin did in TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW. Both books also have heart. And they both explore broken marriages/relationships, as well as explore the connection between avid fandom and violence. I'd say REBOOT is masculine-oriented than TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, and in some ways lines up with FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE. Taylor's take it slightly more meta, but every bit as entertaining.

As far as a specimen-for-your-syllabus goes, REBOOT has heavy WHITE NOISE vibes. The author masters not only DeLillo's satirical themes but also his deft, character-driven narrative style. What's really interesting to me is that, back when I first read WHITE NOISE, the disasters -- like the Airborne Toxic Event -- felt so... speculative. Exercises in extrapolation; the assumption being that we were still living within a space that was at a distance or remove from such extreme scenarios. But boy have times changed (or did I just get old?). Either way, the cultural phenomena and environmental disasters in REBOOT are either already part of our actual existence (forest fires, mass shootings, QAnon/space laser believers, etc) that there's definitely a difference in how the book hits. (Although, side note: I guess the Airborne Toxic Event has now actually happened, too! It just hadn't at the time when I first encountered WHITE NOISE.) We live in a world where it has become difficult to look at a headline and guess whether it comes from the Onion or the BBC, and in some ways I suppose that gives REBOOT a more incisive bite.

All this said, this is not a "cold" academic novel! Or a mean one whose entire point is cynicism. Taylor appears to actually hold his characters in warm regard (gasp), and that keeps a warmth kindled in the reader's heart to want to keep hanging out with them and turn those pages. In the interest of discussing this in terms of "reader recommendations" I would urge those who are reading for entertainment to make sure to read further than the "cold open." While the book opens with the POV of a self-proclaimed Incel who implies he's an imminent active shooter, this isn't where the book lives. Read on -- it's worth it.

Oh, and besides the fact that the cover reminds me of those airbrushed T-shirts you used to be able to buy at your local beach boardwalk in the 1990s, now that I've read the book, I see what's in the rest of the picture, and "get it"!