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A review by jonscott9
Songbook by Nick Hornby
2.0
I'm reading and have read, especially in the past two years of pandemia, a lot of books about music, musicians, music criticism, and the like.
Enter Nick Hornby's Songbook in 2003. Judging by how much I enjoyed the 2000 film version of High Fidelity, I had sincere hopes for this read. The NYT Book Review declared it "a kind of prose equivalent of a mixtape" in a blurb on the paperback cover, and "delightfully passionate."
If that were the case, it'd be a rather homogenous mixtape. For the most part, it's terrifically white book. It hails from nearly 20 years ago, but feels about 40 years old in its coverage. Plus, he writes about and brings up Bob Dylan *a lot* for someone who doesn't particularly care for him and his music.
The chapters on Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith – at opposite ends of this book – bored me a bit, when they absolutely should not. Hornby's vigor or "passion" for these artists, albums and tracks, did not shine through for me for about two-thirds of this thankfully slender tome.
In the end, I should've expected this to be what it was: more aligned with the vibe and through-line of John Cusack's High Fidelity than Zoe Kravitz's more diverse and inclusive 2020 version, made for TV. I rewatched the film version during quarantine proper in the pandemic, and it made me cringe in ways I hadn't realized the past couple times. That's the passage of time and the new angles by which we look on things, knowing what we know and value now.
In closing a li'l list of what I'm definitely glad for in this book:
- Hornby's thoughts on Nelly Furtado and "I'm Like a Bird," a song/singer my (straight) college roommate the first two years was singularly obsessed with; that chapter helped me look differently and more fondly on his fixation
- The author's meditation on Aimee Mann, whose work I delved into more afterward, esp. that splendid Bachelor No. 2 album (note: She has a great new one, too)
- His take on Ani Difranco's "You Had Time," a song I've long adored
- Its introduction to me of the songs "Royksopp's Night Out" and Jackson Browne's "Late for the Sky"
- It's reintroduction to the Avalanches' "Frontier Psychiatrist" ("That boy needs therapy!")
Enter Nick Hornby's Songbook in 2003. Judging by how much I enjoyed the 2000 film version of High Fidelity, I had sincere hopes for this read. The NYT Book Review declared it "a kind of prose equivalent of a mixtape" in a blurb on the paperback cover, and "delightfully passionate."
If that were the case, it'd be a rather homogenous mixtape. For the most part, it's terrifically white book. It hails from nearly 20 years ago, but feels about 40 years old in its coverage. Plus, he writes about and brings up Bob Dylan *a lot* for someone who doesn't particularly care for him and his music.
The chapters on Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith – at opposite ends of this book – bored me a bit, when they absolutely should not. Hornby's vigor or "passion" for these artists, albums and tracks, did not shine through for me for about two-thirds of this thankfully slender tome.
In the end, I should've expected this to be what it was: more aligned with the vibe and through-line of John Cusack's High Fidelity than Zoe Kravitz's more diverse and inclusive 2020 version, made for TV. I rewatched the film version during quarantine proper in the pandemic, and it made me cringe in ways I hadn't realized the past couple times. That's the passage of time and the new angles by which we look on things, knowing what we know and value now.
In closing a li'l list of what I'm definitely glad for in this book:
- Hornby's thoughts on Nelly Furtado and "I'm Like a Bird," a song/singer my (straight) college roommate the first two years was singularly obsessed with; that chapter helped me look differently and more fondly on his fixation
- The author's meditation on Aimee Mann, whose work I delved into more afterward, esp. that splendid Bachelor No. 2 album (note: She has a great new one, too)
- His take on Ani Difranco's "You Had Time," a song I've long adored
- Its introduction to me of the songs "Royksopp's Night Out" and Jackson Browne's "Late for the Sky"
- It's reintroduction to the Avalanches' "Frontier Psychiatrist" ("That boy needs therapy!")