Rating: 
Summary: Every guy should read this!
Review: I have never been so affected by a character as with Hornby's Rob Fleming. Rob's emotional turmoil mixed with his inability to stop making top five lists for everything, was something I, and most every man around, will connect with. Women would appreciate this book for a no holds barred look into the psyche of the grown-up Gen X man. Though Hornby's characters are British, they feel as real as our next door neighbors. Thanks for an incredible read...I think I understand myself better!
Rating:
Summary: Introspection at its finest
Review: Hornby captures male introspection in a way I have never seen before. Everything we have wanted to say or explain about our life, behavior and motivation, but never had the words for, is laid out in plain view in High Fidelity. Great read and a must buy!
Rating:
Summary: Sorry, Boys, the Secret's Out
Review: If you're a woman looking for insight into a man's mind that isn't some stupid Cosmo magazine thing, you have two great options right now: Hornby's High Fidelity and Brauner's Love Songs of the Tone-Deaf. If you're a man, you should read them too, because you'll completely identify (my boyfriend did). Both books are dead-on hilarious portayals of the way slacker generation guys think, and both are my favorite books of the last three years -- intelligent, well-written, funny novels that confirm your best hopes about literature.
Rating:
Summary: True Life Confessions of a Record Geek
Review: I read "High Fidelity" on the way home from the Austin Record Show where purchase decisions are based on minutia like mono or stereo or that wee little scratch in the inner groove, much like the stuff that Rob lives every day that his shop is open. After such a vinyl intensive weekend, I found Hornby's record collector geek jokes are so right on. I was even reading them out loud to my husband, who commandeered the book only have his world rocked. Now we set up at record shows, and he horrifies the other (perpetually single) record dealers with his line, "It's only records." Thank god the cost of his therapy was only the time it took for him to read this book!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent laugh-out-loud novel
Review: The characters in this novel are so real, I mean who hasn'tknown or been the go-nowhere, self-obsessed, 30-something who turns tomeaningless obsessions like records, music, bands etc. which keep them in suspended youth? Having been there myself and been married to someone Exactly like the main character, I laughed out loud at the right-on situations and character dialogue. The main character owns a failing record shop and spends his days making top five lists and talking shop with the other 30-something slackers who seem to also be stuck in post teenage band member wannabe status. Although they can boast not of successful jobs or personal lives or romantic involvement, they seem to think they have the right to ridicule everyone who walks into their shop. Although the characters live in England this shop could be in Anytown, U.S.A. It's a slice of life most of us can relate to and it's refreshing to know that for those of us who have been there, we aren't alone!
Rating:
Summary: Give this to a man that you love...
Review: I picked this up in anticipation of the movie and tore through it one rainy Sunday afternoon. This is one of the best books that I've read in a good while. I agree with the majority of the male reviewers that said that this book described them perfectly -- I'm not a man, but I think this book helped me understand the ones in my life a little better. I sent my copy to a friend of mine who reminded me very much of Rob, and sure enough, he not only agreed that he was like Rob, but he wanted to send copies to his friends so they in turn would understand him better. The movie is pretty faithful to the book, but I urge everyone to read this at some point in their dating lives. In the meantime, I'm buying another copy for myself since my friend is keeping mine!
Rating:
Summary: It'll end up in your &"reread every couple of years" pile
Review: Nick's one of the best, most sneaky writers I know. Well, I don't actually know him, but I know a friend who...okay, I don't actually know anyone who knows him, but he signed my presentation copy of High Fidelity. So, okay, it's actually the library's copy, but he's definitely on my top-ten, all-time best writers list of the nineties... Nick Hornby writes romances. Sure, they're guy romances, which means there's a lot of duck and cover, much waffling, and many reorganizations of CD collections. But the bed-swapping is desultry and the typical masculine evasions are half-hearted, because Hornby's men are all in their mid-thirties and are beginning to experience the nagging heebie-jeebies, a sort of group angst. What if, they think, to paraphrase Gregory Corso, what if I'm sixty years old and all alone, with pee-stains on my underwear? What if I'm merely ordinary? What if I'm not...special? What if I'm going to die? Nick Hornby's men have virtually no moorings. They're like helium balloons, their strings digging annoyingly into the palms of the women and children who stubbornly hold onto them. Inevitably, these people want to let them go. And when they do, Hornby's antiheroes are terrified, of dissipation, of annihilation, of being alone. Without the defining weight of family, these men suspect they'd be merely ciphers. They'd be right, but they'd also be wrong, and this is what makes Hornby's books so quietly beautiful. Rob Flemming doesn't have a life, he has a list. He's the spectator on the sidelines, keeping his options open, scorecard in hand, calculating up averages. The results are mixed: he can quote you the entire Stax catalogue, but he can't really tell you why Laura, his lover, is moving out. True, yes, there was that affair and a baby and an abortion, but...but.... Well, Rob suspects he's really a nasty wretch of a slimeball, and to prove it to himself, he begins revisiting all the disasterous lost-loves of his Pre-Laura days (in chronological order, of course). He has a half-hearted affair with a real recording artist, and suitably thrilled to discover HER ex is a well-known American musician ("Steve";, but he's not going to name-drop). Not a lot happens in a Hornby book, but the flow is so effortless, so peppered with trenchant growthfulness, so well written and sardonic, and so damn funny, that you don't much care. This is partly due to Nick Hornby's talent for dialogue, which he writes with the same flawless ear as fellow Britons Nina Bowden and Barbara Pym. At one point in the book, when Laura is haranguing Rob on his failings, she says, "You just...you just don't do anything. You get lost in your head, and you sit around thinking instead of just getting on with something, and most of the time you think rubbish. You always seem to miss what's really happening." To which he replies, "This is the second Simply Red song on this tape. One's unforgivable. Two's a war crime. Can I fast-forward?" Buy this book, read it the first time for the humor, which will have you on the floor. Read it again, for it's poignancy. And if you see Rob, give him a hug for me. He's not such a bad lot after all.
Rating:
Summary: Gi'me five!
Review: Before there was MPEG-3 or digital surround sound or even stereo, there was High Fidelity. Hi-Fi delivered recordings with a full audible frequency range, from bass to treble, through a single channel. And it was fantastic. It made record engineering into a real art form and was the basis for the present, vast culture of recorded music. Hi-Fi belongs on any list of great techno-cultural advances.What "High Fidelity", the book by Nick Hornsby, does is distil life, love, and culture into pivotal moments. The "fidelity" is to the highs and lows of everyday life. Rob, the main character, is a compulsive list maker--what he calls his top five lists: e.g. top five R&B singles, top five girls who dumped me, top five missed opportunities, etc. Since this owner of a used record store in London appears at the start of the book to have reached simultaneous nadir points in his career, love-life, and business, these lists assume great poignancy--I challenge anyone to read it without thinking up a few lists of their own. It sounds like the book might be dull and angst-ridden. There is angst, but it comes laced with laugh-out-loud dialog and situation--all delivered with a dead-pan cool. I can't remember a book that was so arch and knowing about male intimacy. In fact, it's hard to think of many books that were as funny. So in the spirit of "High Fidelity", here goes, my top five books that made me laugh out loud whether or not I was the only person in the room. 5. "Thank You for Smoking" by Christopher Buckley 4. "A Fine Madness" by Elliot Baker 3. "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornsby 2. "At Swim-Two-Birds" by Flann O'Brien 1. "Jim Blain and His Grandfather's Ram" by Mark Twain Altho' the Twain piece is, in my opinion, the funniest prose ever written and I just couldn't leave it out, it's actually a short story from "Roughing It". Since the others are sustained novels, I'll have to give the number one slot to none other than "Catch 22" by the late, great Joseph Heller. Anyone else have a list? I just learned that "High Fidelity" has been made into a movie starring John Cusack. Roger Ebert gives it a full four stars and I have great hopes that it will be as good as the book in its cinematic way--but don't miss the original.
Rating:
Summary: My Generation
Review: I know, it's a cliche, but if you liked the movie you'll love the book. I work in a bookstore and I recommend High Fidelity and Brauner's Love Songs of the Tone-Deaf to everyone. Both are great, dead-on funny portrayals of the way young people live, think, laugh, love. Two great books that should be required reading however old you are.
Rating:
Summary: It had me laughing when I should have been sleeping.
Review: High Fidelity is the only book I can remember that acutally caused me to laugh out loud. My wife can attest to the number of times I woke her up to read a particularly amusing passage. In fact, I read her so many, she decided there was no point in reading the book herself. An easy read, it offers insight into middle age human frailty (primarily male frailty) in an extremely entertaining and humorous fashion. High Fidelity is a novel that Dave Barry would be proud of, although he might be a bit jealous. Two thumbs up!
|
