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Summary: Very Funny
Review: A book about normal guy in an abnormal life. One of the few books I have read that made me laugh out loud. Very dry sense of humor.
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Summary: It's a cliche - but it really is unputdownable
Review: If you're a bloke - you'll think Nick Hornby wrote it about you and you'll find it incredible how someone can know so much about you. Ultimately heartwarming to know you're not the only one.
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Summary: Tell me this is true!
Review: As a woman, I enjoyed reading the other reviews of this book by male readers but felt that my gender was under represented. I thought it was a fantastic read. I found the character's insights and humor to be at once familiar and reassuring. This would be a great book for men and women to discuss together. Self-depricating humor but not without empathy. I learned alot and laughed even more. I would recommend this book heartily to many different people.
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Summary: Funny and easy
Review: Great relaxing read. Didn't like ending though.
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Summary: the Best
Review: Quite simply, the best book I've read in years, and I read thirty/forty books a year. This one's a keeper, and I'll never forget the piquant line that those caught up in music (read: art) live too intensely to stay in a relationship
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Summary: Buy more than one if you ever hope to finish it!
Review: This book caused great consternation in our beach house last weekend! I kept interrupting perfectly normal conversations to "let me read you just one part" and by the end of the weekend I practically had to tether the book to my arm -- the house had turned into an army of bookstealers. The part about "Reservoir Dogs" is particularly both hilarious and witty (not the same thing) and had my compadres in hysterics. A wonderful, thoughtful, interesting and sympathetic look at the gap between the Baby Boomers and Gen-X, and the loves, jobs, families and crises that make it all worth living -- and definately worth reading about. I'm about to order ten copies from Amazon so that I can eventually get my own back. I want it to be part of my permanent collection, not on permanent loan!
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Summary: These Brits are Funny!
Review: I read this after finishing White Merc With Fins, by another young british author, whose name now escapes me. Both are hilarious coming of age stories (isn't it funny how our generation isn't coming of age until their late twenties and early thirties). Al Green is now one of my favorites, and I'm playing my old Aretha and Marvin Gaye albums every day. More novels should so perfectly examine our late 90's angst, with so much warmth and humor
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Summary: Passionate about Life but annoyed by everything
Review: When I was 15, I thought music, cool music that is, was the most important thing in the world. The characters in this book still do and the results are hilarious. Read the first 20 pages and Rob's analysis of the previous relationships in his life will slay you. He is a self-centered dope, but his observations are so keen, so right on, so flavored with amusing top-5 lists (about anything), that you have to love him. He is completely obsessional, but at least he understands this, and it is this understanding that drives the book of this loser. Read it. You'll love it
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Summary: An Underrated, Dog-Eared Classic
Review: I have a tendency, when reading a particularly good book, to underline phrases or passages which strike a chord as exceptionally funny, poignant, truthful, or ridiculous. I then dog-ear the page for quick, easy reference. Usually there are only a few of these stand-out pages. My copy of High Fidelity, however, has as many dog-eared pages as non. There is not a scene, moment, word, or punctuation mark in this exhilarating novel that did not only strike a chord with me, but succeeded in violently pounding one chord after the next until my ears rang with bittersweet pain. As Rob deals with his break-up with Laura, and the intense self-examination which ensues, he exposes (to himself and the reader) the many, puzzling gears grinding away in the archaic machine known as the modern man. "I could see her losing interest in me," he says, "so I worked like mad to get that interest back, and when I got it back, I lost interest in her all over again." No explanations are offered, nor would any suffice; Rob is as clueless as any man who finds himself being led by that other, smaller brain south of the border, without knowing where it's taking him or why. At least Rob has the capacity of self-reflexion, a gift which makes High Fidelity a bittersweet and hilarious story any man will recognize, perhaps to his own amazement or shock. I, myself, am shocked and amazed that Nick Hornby's first novel has not gained greater popularity on a scale with Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. Like that cult success, High Fidelity is fast, funny, poignant, and overflowing with the sort of unforgettable minutiae that has one constantly reading aloud to one's friends. To this end, I have embarked on a campaign to buy a copy for every one of my friends, in the hopes that they will see their own reflections in this crystalline pool as clearly as I saw my own. (I would loan them my copy, but it's too dog-eared and marked-up to read.
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Summary: It's all true
Review: A friend let me read his copy of this book. He is married I am not. We are about the same age - early 30's. Same as Rob.
He related to the "vinyl cannot be beaten" side of the story. I related to the single bloke recently split up with girlfriend. He wants to be a DJ, as Rob is. I want to understand myself and women in a relationship - as Rob does.
We both have a great sense of humour - as Rob does. All our friends have now read this book too, and we all agree it's all true
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