Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined by Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists

Each week, the writers of The A.V. Club issue a slightly slanted pop-culture list filled with challenging opinions (Is David Bowie's "Young Americans" nearly ruined by saxophone?) and fascinating facts. Exploring 24 great films too painful to watch twice, 14 tragic movie-masturbation scenes, 18 songs about crappy cities, and much more, Inventory combines a massive helping of new lists created especially for the book with a few favorites first seen at avclub.com and in the pages of The A.V. Club's sister publication, The Onion.

But wait! There's more: John Hodgman offers a set of minutely detailed (and probably fictional) character actors. Patton Oswalt waxes ecstatic about the "quiet film revolutions" that changed cinema in small but exciting ways. Amy Sedaris lists 50 things that make her laugh. "Weird Al" Yankovic examines the noises of Mad magazine's Don Martin. Plus lists from Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Ben Garant, Tom Lennon, Andrew W.K., Tim and Eric, Daniel Handler, and Zach Galifianakis -- and an epic foreword from essayist Chuck Klosterman.

A.V. Club was founded in 1995 as the arts-and-entertainment arm of the satirical newspaper and website The Onion. The two brands quickly became distinct from each other, with The Onion providing humor and America’s finest news, and the A.V. Club becoming a significant, well-received source for pop culture news and commentary. In recent years, the A.V. Club’s web presence has become huge, attracting over a million unique users per month who visit for reviews, interviews, listings, and features on film, television, music, books, and more. Inventory will enjoy contributions from the entire A.V. Club staff, but the primary staff members assigned to the book project are Editor Keith Phipps, Managing Editor Josh Modell, and Associate Editors Tasha Robinson and Kyle Ryan.

Chuck Klosterman is the bestselling author of ten nonfiction books (including The Nineties; Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; and But What If We’re Wrong?), two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man), and the short story collection Raised in Captivity. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, Spin, The Guardian, The Believer, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons. He was raised in rural North Dakota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.