Customer Reviews

Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions

5 star:		(76)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

My gifted (#16), multilingual (#78) 28 year old son (his mother and I are divorced (#66)) has recently returned from a year of teaching English in Japan (#11, 19, 42, 58, 71, 72,) to attend graduate school (#47 and #81) and he visited me today. We had some freshly brewed gourmet coffee (#1) and ate a couple of $12 sandwiches (#63) while watching several episodes of the Wire (#85). As he left he borrowed some of my Criterion Collection (#106) DVD's of 1950's classic Japanese films (#116). And this was just today!

I thought that this book was hilarious, and I love the sub-title (The Definitive Guide to the Unique Tastes of Millions). Although less than half of the "stuff" applied to me I really got a kick out of it and bought a couple more copies for friends.

Let's clear up one thing though; this was not meant to apply to ALL white people. I have two brothers (both republican, blue collar conservatives) and I would be surprised if even two items on the list applied to them and they lead happy, fulfilled lives (or so they tell me). This book is directed to a certain sub-sect of the white population. We like to think that we are different but many of us are different in the exact same ways. We know who we are and we should be able to laugh at ourselves (#103, Self Deprecating Humor).

Christian Lander - with some photographic help from his wife Jessica Lander - has succeeded in transforming into book form his blog site STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE and the result is a compendium of 150 idiosyncrasies that mark white people as a groupie well worth 'mocking'. Lander writes so well that his zingers remain on target while providing entertainment for the reader instead of producing a mockery or lambast too personal to continue. The first clue to his universal approach is the subtitle of the book, 'A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions', and if you don't catch the humor in that then much of the book will be lost on you!

After reading some of the 'Stuff' Lander lists we begin to feel the artifice of Lander's thinking; the long list of everyday items, as defined or described by Lander, spreads in comic relief the pretentiousness, the shallow desire to be 'with it', the countless fads we indulge while denying the commonality of those items, and the way 'white people' are perceived by the world at large - both at home and abroad. It has been said that nothing is funnier than reality and this book proves that statement 150 times - with many more thoughts initiated by the book that extend the depth of comedy in the 'unique tastes' we claim. For instance, one favorite thing to discuss is public transportation, heralded as a big city luxury worth expanding into the little cities, but stopping short when the word 'bus' enters the conversation. 'When it comes to the subject it's best to understand that white people do not recognize public transit as a viable option until a subway line is built that runs directly from their house to their work. Until that time, public transportation is a luxury only for New Yorkers and Europeans, sort of like opera.'

Other topics addressed range from Netflix, Veganism/Vegetarianism, Microbreweries, Yoga, Tea, Black Friends/Gay Friends, Portland, Oregon to San Francisco prejudices, Bakeries, Hardwood Floors, Integrity (versus 'selling out'), Natural Medicine, Plays, Cheese, Therapy - the list seems endless. From Following Their Dreams, to where to visit/vacation (Third World Countries for all the wrong reasons) to the importance of knowing how to give 'the good dinner party', Lander finds truths that cause us to ache a bit in acknowledging but force us to relax and really laugh at how each of these item is so very true.

To continue on another thing ('stuff') that Lander addresses, Awareness of just how each of these traits define us in the brush with reality that will perhaps not only entertain us while reading this wisely humorous book, but will also turn on the light to the acceptance that 'white people' have become as marginalized as other social groups who have long since found audiences who delight in the 'truth confessionals' that fill our computer YouTube and TVs - oh, but then real white people don't own TVs.... Christian Lander has a major hit on his hands. Read this and share this. It is hilariously entertaining! Grady Harp, July 08

I wasn't offended by this book like many people. I found it entertaining. For about ten entries. Then I realized that the repetition was killing me. Every single entry can be broken down to the same exact formula.

Part One: Title.
Name something that a large subset of yuppies, especially the ones in TriBeCa, SoHo, SoCal, Portland, and Seattle, like. This can be virtually anything, as he points out with bottled water, recycling, music, etc.

Part Two: The Riff.
Spend 4-5 paragraphs mocking this affinity, and how it reflects the needs of white people to simultaneously be different and also the same.

Part Three: Social Advice
Spend 1-2 paragraphs on how you can manipulate this affinity to manipulate and gain advantage over white people.

Repeat. Ad nauseam.

Around Number 105 of this book of 150 entries, the author finally reaches Self-Deprecation. As it turns out, one of the things that white people like most is: Myself--. (Bonus points if you get that joke.) Unfortunately, even the author is afraid to make the joke that white people also seem to like repetition. Perhaps that was 151, and the editors capped it at 150. The world may never know. (Although...I can easily imagine a sequel, MORE Stuff White People Like), that is filled with the same lame formula.

But none of these things were the crucial problem, really. The biggest problem is that this joke is only funny like five or ten times. After twenty times you want to just stop reading most of the entries, unless you come across one that particularly suits you. After another 15-20 in this fashion, you lose interest again, and just start reading the titles.

Best way to enjoy this? Read the website, one entry every few weeks. Saves time, money, and may reamin engaging in this fasion.

Stuff People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions, by Christian Lander, is laugh-out-loud funny. The book jumps right in with 150 things white people like. There are black and white photographs throughout, many of which were taken by his wife. The end of the book has a handy list of the 150 things white people like and a checklist to see what percentage of white you are.

Note: this is not a book about all white Americans, but a book on the white cultural creatives (cc's) (if you know who they are, then you are probably one of them,) that make up over one-third of the population. Many of the defining characteristics of the cc's can be found in the "stuff" Landers writes about, like enjoying the outdoors, organic food, being an environmentalist, caring about education and so on.

Another defining characteristic of the cc's is the belief that they are a unique and authentic bunch--something Landers has too much fun poking at.

There are tips throughout for those seeking to befriend a white person that are hilarious.

The following excerpts will give you a taste of the book:

* Coffee: "For the most part, white people love Starbucks, although they will profess o hate how the chain is now a multi international corporation."

* Organic food: "Because of the balance of global wealth and power, there is a general assumption that white people are pretty shrewd. And for the most part, history has proven this to be true. But white people have one great weakness: organic food."

* Having black friends: "...an abundance of black fiends (defined in white culture as two) also enables a white person to be the resident expert on African-American issues when there are no black people around."

* Multilingual child: All white people their children to speak another language. There are no exceptions."

Dinner Parties: Outside of dictatorships and a few murder trials, there might not be a more rigorous judgement process in the modern world."

I love that the bio on the back cover includes the fact that he is a Ph.D dropout.

I was also impressed that Landers is up on the water bottle and paper/plastic vs. canvas bag wars. He knows his culture.

Highly recommend.

From the author of the award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet.

Here's the good news about white people: they're just like us. They seek the approval of their peers but want to do as little work as possible to achieve that, and feel good about themselves by looking down on others. The bad news: they run the world.

That's why the rest of the human race wants to either be them, marry into them, screw them, screw them over, or all of the above. To prove my point consider this: the richest non-white families in America and around the world will spare no expense in sending their children to Yale and Harvard so that their kids can learn to be white and meet white people. That's a fact that Christian Lander glibly ignores in his book, and instead creates a fantasy that white people are just spoiled kids who need to be tolerated. That's one of the two flaws with this book.

The other: the author happens to be white. Mr. Lander repeats how white people like to have it both ways: they like diversity and ethnicity as long as it comes with a warranty and you can order out. So this book suffers from being too white in that it's alternative without being edgy and it's satirical without being dark -- it performs the ultimate white trick of making fun of white people without actually offending them.

Nevertheless, this is a superb and insightful book. By reading this book you'll discover that white people are all unique individuals who live in Portland Oregon, who have studied abroad in Europe, love sushi and marijuana and yoga, like having black and gay friends who are basically white, like to renovate old homes, and are the only reason why things like documentaries and liberal arts universities exist.

After reading this book I now have a fuller, deeper understanding of the world. I'm Chinese but I do have many white friends, and they perplex me. Why is he listening to public radio on a Saturday morning? Why does he want to invite me to a film festival -- who wants to watch that crap? Why did he suddenly decide to get married at age 39? Why does he subscribe to the New Yorker, and not actually read it? Why does she have all the ugly modern furniture in her room? Now I finally know: It's because they're white.

The book is subtitled "The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions" but it's more of a work in progress than an encyclopedia. There are many instances where I found myself arguing with the author. For example, Christian Lander writes that white people like the New Yorker -- but in my experience I've discovered that they like the New York Review of Books more because they've never read it, and they're pretty sure no one's ever read it either.

And yes Wes Anderson is a very white director but I think the quintessentially white director is Noah Baumbach. His debut film "Kicking and Screaming" was a movie that every white has thought of making, and it's about college kids who speak and think in a manner that white people imagined they once did.

But I'm merely nitpicking here. This will indubitably become one of the most important books of our time, and I strongly encourage this text to be taught in high schools around the world.

Is it time to stop discussing the absurdly popular blog Stuff White People Like? Not just yet. The book perfects and expands Christian Lander's satirical achievement considerably, justifying a closer look and providing an Indian Summer to his success. The book's subtitle, "The definitive guide to the unique taste of millions," explains its power: Lander exposes how what many think is their unique, ineffable taste in artisan breads, Wes Anderson movies and Arcade Fire is not only instantly identifiable, but has the mass appeal of Nascar. Stuff White People Like, as Bobos in Paradise before it, has defined not a race but a demographic; and by defining it, has exposed one massive pretension: We white people thought we had escaped demographics.

As most know, the book reads like an anthropological field guide that would enable an outsider to befriend and win favors from "white people," that is, 20-30 something upper middle-class left-leaning North Americans probably educated at small liberal arts colleges. Because, according to Lander, "white people need authenticity like they need oxygen," it can be difficult to watch one's carefully cultivated identity exposed in these pages as utterly commonplace.

As the white tide of satire encroaches upon one's lifestyle choices, the reader keeps retreating, seeking higher ground to secure some kind of uniqueness. But, as so many readers have learned, there's no escape. The fact that someone can so easily identify our "uniqueness" exposes our sameness. It can sting a bit, but overall, it's funny. Lander's severest critique, however, is reserved for liberal pieties; and in puncturing them, Stuff White People Like operates like a conservative Trojan horse.

Consider #18, simply entitled Awareness. White people "firmly believe all the world's problems can be solved through 'awareness' - meaning the process of making other people aware of problems, magically causing someone else, like the government, to fix it." #62 is Knowing What's Best for Poor People. White people believe that "if given money and education, all poor people would be exactly like them." When talking to a white person, "It is essential that you make it clear that poor people do not make decisions based on free will." New in the book is #112, Free Health Care: White people love it, "at least until they have to wait in line for an MRI. This is very similar to the way that white people express their support for public school when they don't have children." #57 concerns Michael Moore, "the film-maker who has produced a body of work responsible for reaffirming things that white people already believe in... Perhaps you noticed the increase in health-care policy scholars in 2007, or American foreign-policy experts in 2004, or gun-control pundits in 2002." #98 is Noam Chomsky: "If it were possible to dole out white sainthood..." Could the Russell Kirk Reader do it better?

Lander is emboldened to takes steps in the book that he didn't venture on the blog. Consider #118 on the ACLU:

"Perhaps one of the most universal things on this list is white people's love of the ACLU and its actions. And why not? It incorporates so many things white people love: lawyers, religions their parents don't belong to, knowing what's best for poor people, non-profit organizations, and expensive sandwiches. (The last point is not confirmed, but it's a pretty safe bet to say that there is nothing ACLU lawyers like more than removing the Ten Commandments from public places and then digging into a nice panino)."

The book ridicules fear of the big business boogeyman. White people hate corporations (#82), granted these are not Apple, Target, IKEA or Whole Foods, all companies which make stuff they like. Anti-corporate books like No Logo are poked fun at for their belief that we live in a "Matrix-style manufactured universe," to which a subscription to Adbusters is the liberating red pill.

Why not a few more? "Though he would likely hate them all, white people cannot get enough of Che Guevara" (#113). "If you ever mention Fox News you will have lost respect and credibility to such a high degree that you might have to move" (#115). "Public Radio provides white people with news and information that has the proper perspective (their own)" (#44). A white person becoming a professor involves "moving to a small town, and telling the local residents how they are awful and uncultured" (#81). And here is the shortest entry in its entirety: "White people like Barack Obama because they are afraid that if they don't they will be considered racist" (#8). One can see how for some, polite I-can-laugh-at-myself chuckles might, at this point, be running thin.

A few items on Lander's list take us into more serious territory. A corollary of white people hating their parents (#17) is their love for religions their parents don't belong to, for white people "will believe in any religion that doesn't involve Jesus" (#2). Furthermore, "Whole Foods stores have replaced churches and cathedrals as the most important and relevant buildings in [white] society" (#48). Finally, some who purchased the book for comic relief may not find much of it in #96:

"If you encounter a white person who is trying to produce a child in their late thirties and is having some difficulty, it is very important that you never mention that it might be due to their trying to have children so late in life."

Like a good band that gets too popular, Christian Lander's success makes it easy to underestimate the importance of his accomplishment. Not only has Lander written some clever satire, but he's given a potent explanation as to why so many of us - despite it being exceedingly unfashionable - become more conservative. (He also inadvertently provides the definitive guide to the Emergent Church.) Beyond that, Lander so effectively demolishes our attempts at uniqueness that his book could legitimately be called the end of Generation X. In other words, we've all been found out.

It does not take a lot of imagination to conceive what an answer to Lander's satire might look like. There is, therefore, an escape. To find the high ground, select key items from his list and imagine the reverse. Understand that business, even big business, can be but is not necessarily bad. Have children, stay married, learn more about economics, be more sincere than ironic. Despise not the specter of Lander's book - "the wrong kind of white person" - i.e. the ones at Sam's Club. Know that it's as pathologically weird to hate one's country as it is to hate one's parents. Above all, take traditional faith seriously. White people, as defined by Christian Lander, don't like any of that stuff, and there's the (sort of) good news: Stuff White People Like makes being a conservative religious believer in the 21st century genuinely unique.

Had the author stopped at 50, I'd be a fan. There are about fifty funny ones, with an extra hundred thrown in to flesh the book out. Cutesy and precious is the net effect. I don't know what nerve this guy is tickling in people, but, I'm long past tickled. Now I'm just annoyed.

Provides hours of enjoyment for white people who don't mind being lampooned. This book is about a certain type of white person, the type who listens to NPR, reads David Sedaris, and watches The Colbert Report. It's not a dissection of white culture, but it will resonate with millions of 18-34 year old white men and women whose politics skew to the left.

This book is exactly one joke told and retold 150 times. It's funny on the first page, eye rolling by page 10 and by page 200? Well, I didn't get that far.

Here's the formula the author uses:
1. Pick a random subject (ex. muscle cars)
2. Say that white people like it ("Every white person loves muscle cars, especially if they're classic muscle cars").
3. Random snarky comments mixed in with vague photographs.
4. Discuss how the subject makes white people feel good about themselves.. or not ("Under no circumstances should you point out that cars are bad for the environment or the white person will feel bad about themselves")
5. Repeat.

I just saved you $15. You're welcome.

I have used the expression "God I'm white" many times over my life, typically whenever I try to dance, jokingly rap or act as if I know what I am talking about in an urban setting. Beyond the obvious pigmentation reason for saying so, it tends to be a useful expression for a lack of poise in social settings and a taste for things that lack risk, implying a mainstream quality that goes along with being pale.

But while I always knew I was white, I never realized just how white until taking a good look at Stuff White People Like. Started by Christian Lander in January of 2008, the site is an ethnographic satire of the light-skinned, pointing out how "shockingly predictable" they are in their love of organic food and living by the water. Lander has now made the rare leap from blog to print, producing a book of the same name and good-natured sardonic focus.

"Stuff White People Like" is exactly what it says on the cover: a guide to the preferences of left-leaning semi-affluent to affluent Caucasians of the type usually classified as yuppies or hipsters. There are 150 entries on this group's various interests in dining, hobbies and social situations, written in an academic tone that "teaches" the reader why they like the things they do and the best way to communicate with them in a social setting.

The idea holding the book together is that while white people are loudly opposed to the mainstream and like to feel they are unique, most of them tend to like the same things for the same shallow reasons. They read The New Yorker because it makes them sound informed, support recycling because it "saves the planet" with no effort on their part and threaten to move to Canada the first time things get rough. Lander lists these and more, offering up everything trendy and poking fun in perfectly deadpan tone.

So is this a book worth owning? Well, that depends on two criteria, the first being if you think the joke is funny. I personally do, but that could be because I was able to count 83 of the listed items as things I like and Lander's description is uncomfortably close to the truth about why I like them. It's certainly a joke that depends on the maxim "it's funny because it's true," so if you have these preferences or know people who do it's easy to appreciate.

(Personal acknowledgment: Being a resident of Portland, Oregon, it was hard not to be amused by its place on the list and its entirely appropriate classification as "a `Lord of the Flies' scenario ... whereby a homogenous group of people is left in an area with no one to keep them in check ... but there is a strong likelihood that the city will have mass riots and murder when the local grocery store co-op runs out of organic salmon.")

The concept has earned criticism for being racist - mostly in indignant comments posted to the blog - but not a single one of the entries qualifies as such. It's void of malicious intent or smears, guilty only of bursting the bubble of smugness white people have in thinking they are better for enjoying these things. It does caution against associating with the "wrong kind" of white person, but the difference is based on such trivial things (Dane Cook and faux vintage shirts) it can't be taken as offensive.

The second criteria of owning the book is if you are willing to pay for something where much of the content is already free online. The first half of the book is printed verbatim from the blog entries, discussing the more traditional interests of coffee and marijuana and home renovations. It doesn't hurt in terms of content (considering how amusing the original entries were), but does have a degree of repetition.

To his credit, Lander does include a considerable amount of new content beyond entries, making use of the book format to include charts and tables for how white people make decisions. There is a timeline of gentrification from indie coffee shop to Whole Foods, a blueprint for dinner party autobiographies and how to name children based on whether or not you studied abroad. Particularly clever are checklists on the bookshelves/DVD racks/iPod playlists of white people, as well as appropriate comments to make them feel assured in their choice of edgy yet socially acceptable media.

If you meet these criteria, then "Stuff White People Like" is worth your time - it's a fine ribbing at a group that could use some mockery, and has the benefit of also being very cleverly written. At the very least it will be a perfect set piece on your coffee table during your dinner party, where over microbrews and cheese you can enjoy your willingness to laugh at yourself prior to a Wes Anderson film viewing.