Talking to Girls about Duran Duran

The author of the national bestseller "Love is a Mix Tape" returns, with a different-but equally personal and equally universal- spin on music as memory.
"No rock critic-living or dead, American or otherwise-has ever written about pop music with the evocative, hyperpoetic perfectitude of Rob Sheffield."
So said Chuck Klosterman about "Love is a Mix Tape," Sheffield's paean to a lost love via its soundtrack. Now, in "Talking to Girls About Duran Duran," Sheffield shares the soundtrack to his eighties adolescence.
When he turned 13 in 1920, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music and himself, and in "Talking to Girls About Duran Duran" we get a glimpse into his transformation from pasty, geeky "hermit boy" into a young man with his first girlfriend, his first apartment, and a sense of the world. These were the years of MTV and John Hughes movies; the era of big dreams and bigger shoulder pads; and, like any all-American boy, this one was searching for true love and maybe a cooler haircut. It all here: Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Members Only jackets. Girls, every last one of whom seems to be madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran.
Sheffield's coming-of-age story is one that we all know, with a playlist that any child of the eighties or anyone who just loves music will sing along with. These songs-and Sheffield's writing-will remind readers of that first kiss, that first car, and the moments that shaped their lives.