Customer Reviews: Read 90 more reviews...
 SPOT ON August 14, 2008
Another double-reader. Music ever overtaken your life, or still does? Then this'll all make sense to you. Great fun=>
Laugh out loud May 9, 2008
I really enjoyed this book. It's quite tragic but funny at the same time. Typical British humour. I couldn't put it down.
If you regularly re-organise your music collection, you'll identify with this novel April 11, 2008
Yes, I'm willing to own up - I was once a female equivalent of Rob, well at least the side of our hero who constantly makes top 5 lists and reorganises their record collection regularly.
Anyone with slight librarianish tendencies will love the comedy in this novel in which the stories of Rob's relationships with the fairer sex are told through his record collection. Rob is no new man, which has led many women to criticize the book, but he's also too intelligent to be just a lad. I loved this novel so much I even bought some of the records mentioned!
Still very faithful April 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read this a couple of times about ten years ago, and it immediately became one of my favourite books: I recall that sharp pang of identification as Rob, the narrator, described his relationships, family and (especially) music. The latter is the thing that stayed with me the longest - indeed, at times it seemed like it was almost a licence for my own feelings about songs, records, films and - let's face it - snobbery.
Rob, Dick and Barry (the latter forever identified in my mind with Jack Black in the film of the novel) don't have opinions, they have lists, and they fight over tiny details in a way that seems unbelievable until you recognise those traits in yourself. The way in which Rob is gradually rescued from this emotional desert by the love of a good woman is heartwarming, and contains some hilarious moments - for example, he's aghast when she says that she sings along with the chorus of "Hi Ho Silver Lining", or goes "Woooh!" at the end of "Brown Sugar" ("there's no greater crime than that, as far as you're concerned, is there?"), or thinks that "Bright Eyes" is different from "Got To Get You Off My Mind" because one song is about rabbits and the other features "a brass band" ("A brass band! A brass band! It's a *horn section*!")
Re-reading it (as light relief in the midst of a much heavier book) after all these years, I enjoyed it all over again. It's Hornby's attention to detail that really makes this work: of course, there's the casual tossing of the names of bands and records into the narrative in a way that expects the reader to understand the references (and the frisson of excitement that's generated when you do), but there's also the way he precisely evokes memories of a time and place just by mentioning the names of defunct stores ("a VG supermarket", "Harlequin Records").
I'd forgotten, however, just how immature Rob was (there's a telling conversation he has on the way to a funeral which displays a breathtaking degree of self-centredness), and some of the technical detail has dated (I imagine that new readers from the download age can't understand why anyone should have so many CDs and records cluttering up their living space), but it's still a brilliant book, and an indirect warning about the dangers of valuing things over people. Or writing about things too much. Like this, for example.
 Quite entertaining at times, but not great February 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Im not too sure about this novel, its starts off very well, creating an interesting narrative, styled in a unique Hornby way. I just felt that it tailed off markedley as you went on through. I can see why many people like it, but not why they love it. Definately a decent book for a light read or a commute, but for serious reading im not sure it offers enough. In relation to some of his other books, it is much better than "A Long Way Down", but doesnt really hold a candle to the excellent "About a Boy"
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