Rating: 
Summary: Definately a keeper
Review: After seeing the movie starring John Cusack, I had to read the book. It was even better than I expected. Very witty humor and very believable characters. This is one book that I have read multiple times since I purchased it a few years ago. You just can't grow tired of it. Definately worthy of the main characters top 5.
Rating: 
Summary: We are all sensitive people...
Review: My second Nick Hornsby book went down as smooth as the first ("About a Boy.") Slick and Funny, "High Fidelity" is another easy tome of manly coolness and the deep mysteries of relating to women as an adult, instead of as a kid on the playground. The writing style is sharp and the book flies by, clocking in at a few days read at the most.Hornsby does a great job of capturing the strange realm of the "collector," and of understanding that mode of life. As the owner of a comic book store for a few years, I could relate to Rob's daily woes and the misfits that one can find oneself surrounded by. The music makes for some nice interludes in the storyline. The characters are not altogether likeable, but they do grow on you. Like his other book I have read, "High Fidelity" is not exactly deep or thought-provoking, but it is fun. Sort of like a pop song on in book form.
Rating:
Summary: Every Teenage Boy Should Be Required To Read This!
Review: Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" is, along with W. Somerset Maugham's "Razor's Edge," one of my favorite books to read and the both of them should be required reading for any boy becoming a man (i.e. in high school/college). Or even for any woman, although this is one book that could best describe how and why men are the way they are.
The movie, starring John Cusack, is an OK adaptation of the book, but, in the long-run, doesn't come close to covering all of the many true-isms of the book. Take my word for it, guys: This is one book you have to read simply because it's right on the money of how men think, feel and act.
Also, being a man who has worked at a music store for a very funny time, I found the music, movie and pop references simply great! Anyone will! The fact that Hornby also dedicates a portion of a chapter to Bruce Springsteen and his songs is simply genius!
This book helps to explain just why men can mostly be jerks: If we weren't, women would lose the interest. That's why nice guys fall behind in the dating pool! A great example of this in the book is when he's talking about how 14-18-year-old boys have this massive sex drive but girls at that age are not interested. However, a 32-year-old woman hits her sexual peak and by that time the man has been rejected so much from women that he no longer doesn't even really try. Hornby's theory: "The perfect man for the 32-year-old woman is the 14-year-old b-b-b-b-boy!"
I may have written it so it sounds ridiculous. But trust me. If you read Hornby's descriptive facts and ways of explaining, then you'll believe it's true also.
This book is difficult to put down and come to read later because of the hysterically funny and very real insights that his character comes to descover. The women are bashed but uncovered for some of their ridiculousness just as men are in through his slacker hero, Rob. Each character is well written and the character of Rob's girlfriend, Laura, is endearing.
READ THIS BOOK!!! YOU WON'T REGRET IT!!! Whether you're a boy, girl, man, or woman, this book will make you laugh and also stop to think about how truly absurd the sexes can most times be.
This is my favorite book EVER!!! I'd give it ten stars if I could.
Rating:
Summary: the book review
Review: the book is very funny and compulsive. I strongly recommend the book because the great characters and the interesting story make you want to keep reading it. And the book tells a lot about the guys's "secrets". On the other hand, the book is so graphic on sex and manliness, but it tells us the guys' thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Fear of Flying for men
Review: Back when I worked in a bookstore, I my father used to send me lists of things to pick up for him. He requested mainly books about bread-baking and biographies, his two passions. I was surprised when High Fidelity made the list, since he rarely read contemporary fiction. A year later, he had forced every woman he knew to read it. "This is how it is to be a man." he said. I've heard the same thing from other men as well. I truly enjoyed High Fidelity, although I am a young woman and not a man, because it is funny, touching, and entertaining from the first page to the last. Somewhere around the middle of the book, I decided that High Fidelity is Fear of Flying for men. It's too bad it has taken so long for Nick Hornby to provide for men what Erica Jong gave women decades ago, but it should be considered required reading for any man who reads or any woman who wants to understand them. This is not a touchy feely sensitive guy book - that just wouldn't do the trick. The main character is snobby, manipulative, self-absorbed, and acts like a fourteen year old sometimes. He has carefully manufactured a life for himself where nobody can tell him what to do by owning a record store and sabatoging his relationships with women. But he is actually pretty cool - he has great taste in music and listens to everything, and he's hilarious. You can't judge him too harshly for being normal. I enjoyed the movie, but for completely different reasons than the book. The movie is the story of a guy trying to figure out whether or not he wants to grow up and commit to a relationship. The book is about the walls men put up to protect themselves, the escape routes they build from reality, what they really want out of life, and what makes them fail or succeed at getting it. Only The Full Monty is as good a story of the inner lives of men.
Rating:
Summary: Prevents Road Rage
Review: I listened to the audiotape of this book while commuting. It is hilarious! Anything that can keep someone laughing through a two-hour traffic jam has a lot to recommend it. I saw the movie years ago and wasn't all that impressed. But I picked up an audiotape of "About A Boy" and noticed it was by the same author, so I decided to check it out. I think it's even better. The reader is fantastic...his somewhat "monotonic" delivery is absolutely perfect for Rob's incredible internal dialogues. No one I've read has done the dazed, confused and thoroughly bewildered-about-it-all male quite as well...or with such humor. I can't help really LIKING his guys, no matter what "unforgiveable" things they've done. I love Rob's clumsy attempts to come to grips with his life! He's constantly trying to figure out either what went on or what's going on taking us along for the ride. I might even check out the movie again.
Rating:
Summary: True Love on Vinyl!
Review: High Fidelity, Nick Hornby, Penguin Books, London, 245pp., £6.99 The plot of this entertaining novel is simple and even slightly adolescent. Rob Fleming is a troubled, profoundly narcissistic man in his mid-thirties, who owns a failing record shop called 'Championship Vinyl' in one of London's seedier areas. On his payroll are two misfits named Barry and Dick who are almost totally unsuited to any other kind of employment, and who, together with Rob, display a vast amount of knowledge about pop-trivia in all its forms. Indeed, Rob is so expert at his job that he can find for a customer a record he has only dreamed of (literally) in his sleep. Barry can bully diffident customers into purchases, and Dick takes a gentler, more intuitive approach, to similar effect.
At the start of the novel, Rob is the only one of the three who seems to have a 'normal' life, as he at least has had numerous girlfriends. Currently, however, his love-life is going through leaner times, as his live-in partner Laura has just announced she is leaving him. More significant events are few and far between in this novel, but as it progresses, Rob encounters Marie LaSalle, a talented American singer in a local pub; he learns that Laura has moved in with a ghastly male neighbour whom he disliked previously and now positively loathes, he rearranges his record collection (for Rob a major event), and so on. His most memorable sexual 'conquest' is Marie, although her frankness about sexual needs and occasional crudities grate a little against Rob's English sense of decorum.
Rob continues to exhibit jealousy over Laura, however, and becomes childishly obsessed with finding out whether she has slept with her new boyfriend, Ian Raymond (aka 'Ray'). He then embarks on a voyage of discovery by re-contacting five previous girlfriends, (Alison, Penny, Jackie, Sarah and Charlie), in an attempt to discover what it was about his personality that led to their final rejection of him. This quest proves full of discoveries for Rob. Alison has married the boyfriend who supplanted him, Penny informs him that he rejected her, Jackie is a dull woman with an equally dull spouse; Sarah seems destined to be a wallflower, and this leaves only the best of them, Charlie, whom Rob still idealises. She proves to be the most disappointing and enlightening of all. At a dinner party, he finally sees Charlie for what she is (and always was). Despite her beauty, she emerges as a conversationally inane, shallow, desperately hopeless bore. Things that previously enthralled Rob about her all turn out to have been utterly misconceived.
In the meantime, Barry has joined a rock group as lead vocalist, about which Rob is brutally cynical, and Dick has picked up a new girlfriend. The most life-changing event, however, occurs when Laura's father, Ken, passes away, and Rob is invited to the funeral. As he sees Laura's grief unfolding before his very eyes, he suddenly rejects his need to change; he realises he has changed already, and for the better. The remainder of the novel is somewhat predictable, but is not without charm. He and Laura get back together, and she sets about disabusing him of many of his preconceptions and bringing out all his own hidden talents. He resumes his career as a DJ, which in years gone by had brought him true happiness, and is reluctantly coerced into introducing Barry's band, Sonic Death Monkey, at a concert. Much to Rob's amazement, Barry launches into a note-perfect rendition of several popular songs, and the last scales finally fall from Rob's eyes. A marriage proposal to Laura is the ultimate consequence, and although she does not say 'yes' immediately, or at any point in the novel, we know that settling down together is a strong possibility for she and Rob. The ending is ambiguous, but full of hope for a better future.
Perhaps the novel's greatest strength is its humour, and the vividness with which it recreates the most difficult periods of life, such as adolescent sexual awakening. In the best traditions of the 'confessional' novel, Rob does not hesitate to reveal his darker side. Yet he also challenges his readers to look at themselves, and to realise that despicable acts are not solely confined to him. The novel's first person narration is particularly well-suited to this type of study. The style comes across as a valid attempt to present realistic reflection and conversation without over-indulgence in obscenities for their own sake and ever-diminishing shock value. This is also a very British novel in terms of its allusions, moods and settings (its location was successfully altered to Chicago in Frears' film version).
Hornby reveals clearly his understanding of the novelist's craft. The characters are archetypes: the drifter on a perennial attempt to eschew commitment and responsibility (Rob), the smart 'yuppie' (Laura), the folksinger (Marie), the stud (T-Bone), the 'little boy lost' (Dick), the outrageous extrovert (Barry), the politically correct but nauseating modern man (Ian / Ray), the troublesome tramp (Johnny), the beautiful but socially inadept glamour-puss (Charlie), the feminist (Liz), and the pitiful geek whom Rob labels 'The Most Pathetic Man in the World'. Recognisable plot devices work smoothly: Hornby understands the value of dramatic first appearances and unconscious revelations. He presents us with representative sections of conversation, which illustrate his main themes: loneliness and frustration.
Barry's vocal talent represents a 'sleeping' detail which Hornby holds deep in reserve, until the very last pages of the novel. The author also delights in creating false expectations about this, through Rob's cynicism and refusal to believe that Barry's musical abilities are anything other than truly terrible. And the novel concludes with a series of vignettes, presenting characters we have met in typical poses, a technique worthy enough for Shakespeare's 'Cymbeline' even. So re-live your youth and middle-years with Rob Fleming and Nick Hornby's 'High Fidelity'. You won't regret it. Dr. Kenneth D. Farrow
Rating:
Summary: thirtysomething Rite of Passage
Review: I picked up High Fidelity on the recommendations of others not having seen the flick prior to reading the book. I flew through it in 2 days - would have finished it in 1 if not for babysitting. Suffice it to say, it proves to be a quick, easy, and hilarious page-turner. Hornby writes with his witty, British style that makes for a book that you will enjoy and fly through in a short amount of time. I particularly enjoyed the sadistic dialogue between Rob and his 2 dim-witted Championship Vinyl employees Dick and Barry. The totally unoriginal name for Barry's band made me laugh out loud seeing as it fit with his obtuse character - Barrytown. "Be afraid. Be very afraid. Here comes Sonic Death Monkey!" As Rob undergoes his belated rite of passage, he inversely states his previous motto into "It's not what you like, it's what you're like." Good stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Great fun!
Review: I read this book after seeing the movie a number of times and I found that, while I love the movie the book is just amazing. Of course the book is generally better than the movie and this still holds true but they did a good job with the movie not changing too many details. Nick Hornby writes great books. You can totally relate to his character's strange sometimes childish behavior and laugh at them and at yourself. I couldn't put it down!
Rating:
Summary: High comedy with High Fidelity
Review: Nick Hornby's book is a must-read for any man, woman or child who has ever encountered that fanatical zeal common to musicians and record collectors alike. Having lived with a musician for years, and having a father with a record collection that is slowly taking over the house, I found this book with it's cast of characters somewhat re-assuring, as well as a damned good read. I love Nick Hornby, his characters are the Bridget Jones' of the male world: full of insecurities, obsessions and neuroses but ultimately lovable for all of the above. Read it and laugh.
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