Rating: 
Summary: Relationship HELL !!!
Review: In High Fidelity, Hornby successfully walks the fine line between humor and sadness, hope and despair, and is so accurate in his observations that it's easy to forget that this was his first novel. The scene in which Rob tells his mother that Laura has left him will resonate with any aging single person who's ever dreaded telling a parent that he or she has failed at yet another relationship. Hornby's rendering of Rob's store, its employees, and its patrons is one of the most dead-on descriptions that I've encountered in contemporary fiction. That Hornby knows and loves the musical snobs that haunt such places is evident in the characterization of Rob and his two employees. As a person who has spent far too much time and money at record stores just like Championship Vinyl, I can honestly say that Nick Hornby has, as well, and he captures the atmosphere far better than I could ever hope to. Nick Hornby knows and loves music, and his affection and knowledge shines through on every page. I recommend this book highly, along with 2 other quick Amazon reads: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez (also about relationships) and WILL@epicqwest.com by Tom Grimes (it blew my mind: a very funny book!)
Rating: 
Summary: Just like the movie
Review: If you are like me, you somtimes hate the way directors take a story and mutilate it with their own version of a script. I watched High Fidelity, the movie before I read the book, but half way through I realized that it is the exact same as the movie. My recomendation is to save the time laboring over the British slang in the book and watch the movie which is an Americanized version of the same thing.
Rating: 
Summary: Generation X-er Analyzes Love
Review: This book is one I am highly recommending. Nick HOrnby takes his real-life background of working with music & writing & combines them flawlessly. The story revolves around Rob, a Generation X member who is reflecting on how his past loves (musical loves & human loves) impacted him. Rob tells of stories of young, naive love, followed by young adult love, & leads into his current love. He has some help in telling his story along the way with two sidekicks from a music store he owns. The two co-workers bring humor & help in trying to put things into a simple list of top 5...ANYTHING. Rob divulges more about how his heart is hurting throughout. This book is written VERY well & anyone who is a child of the 80s will have a stab of nostalgia as an added bonus. A must have!
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: Absolutely laughed my britches off. Frickin' hysterical. Great insight too. Well done by Hornby.I'm also a soccer fan, and anyone remotely interested should read Hornby's Fever Pitch, his coming-of-age tale about growing up a soccer fan in England. A classic.
Rating:
Summary: Just the kind of book I was looking for
Review: It was like reading a 'Catcher in the Rye' written by Murakami Haruki. Which means I greatly enjoyed the book since I like both of all mentioned above. The only drawback is that it made me depressed about my relationship right now with my boyfriend, since I kept finding common factors with my boyfriend and Rob. Oh well, was a good read anyways.
Rating:
Summary: Honest, perceptive, funny, powerful, well plotted...
Review: Hornby is so readable. Also plenty of music in jokes for people born in the 50s or 60s. I relate to the anatomy of a dying relationship - the ugly mess that you may have decided to break up, but there are still all these ties. And even though you don't want to get back together, this pathetic part of you wants them to feel like it's still costing them something not to be with you.
There's also the thing about the loss of magic once you move in with someone: before every meeting was an exciting assignation - now they're just there because they're not somewhere else. Indeed, somewhere else is where there's some preparations made. It still seems a shame that nakedness can become so casual and non-sexual, but to make a big deal of it would be too inconvenient and after a while, farcical.
The central character's deep closing insight (although there are insights right along the journey. Hornby comes across as someone able to be honest with himself, even some ugly bits, but he still basically likes himself, so it doesn't turn into a jaded piece) is talking about the long-term partner he's finally decided he wants to marry:
"I know what's wrong with Laura. What's wrong with Laura is I'll never see her for the first or second or third time again. I'll never spend two or three days in a sweat trying to remember what she looks like, never again will I get to a pub half an hour early to meet her, staring at the same article in a magazine and looking at my watch every thirty seconds, never again will thinking about her set something off in me like 'Let's get it on' sets something off in me."
Yet novelty is so pathetic compared to commitment - as Hornby continues:
"And sure, I love her and like her and have good conversations, nice sex and intense rows with her, and she looks after me and worries about me ...., but what does that all count for, when someone with bare arms, a nice smile and a pair of Doc Martins comes into the shop and says she wants to interview me? Nothing, that's what, but maybe it should count for a bit more."
In How Far Can You Go, David Lodge goes further by describing a guy who's been married for twenty years acting on an infatuation with a secretary. Far from the usual Hollywood 'a love too deep to be denied, a forbidden love' as being grand and passionate, Lodge shows how stupidly out of sync the indiscretion is with the whole rest of his life - he hasn't begun to think about the implications, of what this could cost him, and how little in effect it's really offering. Likewise the girl doesn't really know what to do with him now.
Earlier in the book Laura remonstrates with Rob (1st person narrator) about how, of course, in trying to always keep doors open he's actually closing at least as many more.
There's some other interesting stuff touching on class, and even more basic proofs that just because someone doesn't know the difference between Miles Davis and Acker Bilk (an example from my own experience, not Hornby's) they still may be worth talking to. Some people (especially in this society that lets you string out your teenage lifestyle and, in some cases, ignorance, well into your thirties) may spend decades in a proudly pretentious sub-culture, foolishly only allowing friendships with a the few who share their prejudices. And, dammit, it is a very satisfying book. With his wit, honesty and readability Hornby could, like so many others, have got by without much of a plot. But plotwise this book hinges on a funeral, which, true to life, comes out of the blue. We're just cruising along in this generally feel good novel (although it does touch on some ugly stuff, and in his 'four awful things I've done' slap you right in the face), and experiencing most of the big emotional things in past tense detachment. Plotwise we may vaguely expect Rob to come to terms with Laura's departure and to maybe hook up with someone else. Then Laura's dad dies, somehow we get this full on climactic scene where Rob's at the funeral, and Laura ends up saying to him, "I'm too tired not to go out with you." Later she explains:
"I thought that we were bound by one simple little cord, our relationship, and if I cut it, then that would be that. So I cut it, but that wasn't that. There wasn't just one cord, but hundreds, thousands, everywhere I turned ... and then on the day of the funeral, it was me that wanted you to be there, not my mum. I mean, she was quite pleased, I think, but it never occurred to me to ask Ray, and that's when I felt tired. I wasn't prepared to do all that work. It wasn't worth it, just to be shot of you."
Hornby managed to throw this into a really powerful context.
The sub-plot about Rob taking up DJing again is a bit cheesy, but everyone wants a happy ending.
Strewth, quite a diarising type review - but that's one of the things I enjoy about Hornby - he relates to me. Whereas when I leant a About a Boy to nearing retirement A. (who's given me Stone Diaries and The Idea of Perfection), she couldn't relate - much as I couldn't to these undeniably well written books. Maybe it's a generational thing: not just the pop-culture references, but the whole 'vibe', man, that two similarly aged people may unconsciously share.
Rating:
Summary: Who said my life could be made into a book?
Review: OK, this isn't really about my life, but there are some eerie similarities. The movie even more so, since the film shifted the locale to Chicago, where I live. So why do I say the book is about me? 1. My name is Robert and many (including my mother) call me Rob.
2. I have a major ex-girlfriend named Lara, which is quite close to Laura, the name of the book's ex-girlfriend.
3. I am an inveterate list maker.
4. I'm obsessive about great alternative music.
5. Like Rob in most of the book, my love life mainly sucks, and hopefully will turn out to be good as his does (still waiting on that resemblance to take place).
6. I'm chronically underemployed and a bit of an underachiever. But I'm sure than many readers get the feeling that the book could almost be about them, even those readers not named Rob and not underemployed and not blessed with an ex-girlfriend named Laura (or even Lara). The book is a masterful depiction of an average male inhabitant of 1995 in England, but it could just as easily be Australia or the United States or Canada, because of the way that pop culture has linked together the various nations of the English-speaking world. This is part of the underlying point of the book, that the glue of our culture is not political beliefs or philosophical positions or social philosophies, but L.A. LAW and GONE WITH THE WIND and Stevie Wonder and the Ramones and TERMINATOR 2 and Gram Parsons. Movies, TV, and music. Not even novels make much of a dint in Rob's cultural universe. I think the novel's familiarity with and obvious affection for the culture in which we all live and swim is the clue to why the book is so immediate in its appeal. And the novel has a very real moral message behind this: pop culture, as wonderful and invigorating as it is, sometimes obscures the way our involvement with it masks our own lack of substance and depth as individuals. The novel is also very much about the need to commit, to not be afraid of taking risks. It does this in a very compelling and non-didactical way. Is the book a masterpiece? No. But it is, I believe, very much a snapshot of the way the world looked and felt in the late 20th century. The book is highly entertaining, but it possesses archaeological significance: for someone in the year 2273, wanting to know what life was like and felt like in 1995 (even though the novel is set earlier, that was the year it was published) one could do a lot worse than reading this book. But in the meantime, this is a very entertaining book that anyone should consider picking up, even if your name isn't Rob.
Rating:
Summary: Listmania
Review: Original Review 10/31/03 Loved the movie and heard the book was better. John Cusack and Jack Black are great. Can't say I have a preference, only that I'm glad I experienced both. Michael Duranko,
Bootism: a shoe religion
www.bootism.com
Rating: 
Summary: Utterly Depressing...
Review: Ok now here is one book that is so sad it will make you want to snuff it! Not a good book to read if you're already feeling depressed- despite it's uplifting ending. It has some mildly amusing moments and some interesting theories about relationships. However the book left me feeling completely empty.
Rating:
Summary: How much CAN you like a book???
Review: How much can you like a character that you--as a woman, of course--should not like??? The answer is: A LOT. You totally get on the bus with Rob and sit back for the ride. You want to hold his hand while he sorts it out and you can sympathize... You think, yeah, I'd like to call up old Marvin and find out what the heck happened there! Why DID he break up with me??? Hilarious, touching, irreverant, and engaging. Read this.
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