It only weighs about a pound when you first pick it up, and yet Chuck Klosterman’s book Rock* was hard to lift when I went back to it. It grew heavier and heavier. It became a brick, then an anvil. Klosterman is one of my favorite nonfiction writers — our leading Gen X pop-culture critic. Yet I began to dread returning to it. I was tired. It was late. I had another assignment due before this one. I had to walk the dog.