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In 1995, when Sarah Vowell wrote Radio On, she was a 25-year-old, urban art student fresh out of an immersion in college radio. In 1995, I was a 21-year-old, urban art student still immersed in college radio. Not surprisingly, then and now I mostly agree with the opinions she expresses about things political, social, and musical.

I mention this just to shore myself up a little before summarily dismissing her memoir as a relentlessly whiny bit of cynical petulance. Vowell writes with the assured sense of superiority that can only come from a twenty-something, specifically a twenty-something what we'd now call "hipster" but in '95 I guess we called "indie kid." Everyone but Sarah, it seems, is wrong about journalism, about art, about government, and you'd better fucking well believe they're wrong about what records to listen to.

To be fair, Radio On does precisely capture what it was like being a cynical indie kid in the world of 1995. I was one of them. But that just means the book is one long eye roll, and 17 years later it feels as irrelevant as a freshman term paper.