I have a favorite rock album. It’s silly to have such a thing, because the genre is so expansive that the idea of picking just one is inherently ridiculous. But it’s also comforting. I’ve always liked it, and I know I always will. It’s Beggars Banquet by the Rolling Stones.

I don’t have to make a case for Beggars Banquet as my favorite rock album. Mainly because in his book Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones, Bill Janovitz has done it for me. So, here you go: Beggars Banquet is my favorite album because, as Janovitz describes the record, "The Stones were stepping deep into the darkness of American blues and Appalachian folk." It’s a "veritable banquet of dark, stark, hillbilly folk-evil of "Deliverance"-like spookiness, and Southern gospel and country blues." And if that’s not enough, "Beggars Banquet did nothing less than simultaneously chart the band’s future sound while reaching back to the group’s foundational roots."

Janovitz, who also wrote a book about Exile on Main St. and fronted the band Buffalo Tom, is good at this kind of writing, the kind of criticism that helps you further appreciate something you already knew you really liked. In addition to reading about why I like Beggars Banquet so much, I like knowing that the graffiti-scrawled bathroom wall on the cover of the album was personally vandalized by Mick, Keith, and Anita Pallenberg for the purpose of the photograph. That is to say, I like that Janovitz’s book on the Rolling Stones is a fan’s book. He’s picked fifty songs from the band’s catalogue because he felt they would best tell the story of the band he idolizes. He’s not saying they’re the best or most important songs. They’re the ones he wanted to write about. You could pick on him about which he’s included and which he hasn’t, but it’s clear from how well his book reads that he’s chosen wisely.

Rocks Off is a fun, digestible history of the Stones, written by an enthusiastic appreciator. You get Dean Martin introducing the Stones by saying that "They’re backstage picking fleas off each other," the rivalry with the Beatles (Lennon criticizing Jagger’s "fag dancing"), the Stones copping to ripping off the Velvet Underground, and – chillingly – Jagger changing his line about "who killed Kennedy" to "who killed the Kennedys" when Bobby got shot. Reading Janovitz on his favorite band is so enjoyable that I can almost forgive him for neglecting to devote a chapter to "Parachute Woman." Almost.