31 Songs

I’m in the middle of reading Wolf Hall and thought tonight to interrupt my reading with this little gem from Nick Hornby. I had borrowed it months ago from a friend and they want to lend it to their nephew. 31 songs is insightful. In a sense we all could produce a list of songs, not necessarily 31, that have moved us in some way. Not that it was the song we first danced with a loved one or the song that reminds us of a certain holiday. More a song that spoke to us at a certain point in our life. This book also allows us to eavesdrop on some of his life and who inspired him to find his writing voice. Of course there are also some laugh out loud moments. I chuckled when I read, 'Rubbishing our children's tastes is one of the few pleasures remaining to us as we become old, redundant and culturally marginalised.'

All in all a good read, a quick read, and now it’s back to the court of King Henry VIII and wondering what TC will do next.

The other day I read a rather unfair review of Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge" on The Atlantic, about how he was among the best of second-rate writers, or something like that. In explaining her position, the writer refered to a moment in the book where a character's library is used as a way of describing him, which is apparently lazy. This observation was weird for me, not only because the character in question was Elliot Templeton, who at the time of this "description" had already been psychologically analyzed about a million times before, but also because I always thought a person's library always said more about them than they did, or could only hope to.
Maybe this extends to music- to Nick Hornby, it most certainly does.

When I first read High Fidelity, I didn't know half the music he was talking about- was I extremely uneducated? Maybe. Having expanded my musical horizons, however, I expected to know or at least have heard of most of the artists Hornby was talking about- nope.

Look, I don't consider myself completely ignorant when it comes to music. I'm not a music snob, either- as evidenced by the couple of Taylor Swift tracks on my iPod (yes, I still have an iPod and it shall be burried with me). That being said, I still found myself in alien territory with this book, even after having the songs accompany the essays while I read them.

Bruce Springsteen? Too melodramatic for me. Bob Dylan? Still pissed about him winning the Nobel Prize; will not submit myself to hearing more of his songs I already have. Nelly Furtado? Natural selection of popular music has spoken, and for once I agree with it.

With Hornby talking about music that in my list goes from bland to downright insufferable, I didn't get as much out of this book as, say, a Teenage Fanclub fan would. But I still found it enjoyable- it's always nice to be in Hornby's company, even if he's bashing Noel Gallagher and jazz and Pink Floyd, who in the end, to me, are the ones who Truly Get It.

Of course, I'm not saying everything's a matter of taste and therefore taste does not matter. It matters very much. The question of Aesthetics has a permanent spot in philosophy courses because, contrary to popular belief, there is such a thing as Beauty- and its opposite, which can be just as powerful.

Some elitists will exclude an entire genre and declare it "Not Art"; some will simply ignore it. Truth is, we can't separate stuff by genre: like Hornby says, there are quite a few awesome pop songs that are just as good as any Mendelssohn tracks- which were way too popular in his time, and made too much money, too; so I bet he had his share of elitist hate.

Point being, if you love music, you're gonna have to dig through the trash. Sometimes your trash might be somebody else's treasure, and good for them- that's how serious criticism begins, and we're all the better for it. Not to say, of course, that you can't like shit songs while knowing fully well how shit they are- for instance, I love Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" because it reminds me of High School Math. I love "Total Eclipse of the Heart" because it's so cheesy and ridiculous but even the snootiest people I know sing along to it. So, you're allowed to like your shitsongs. You don't have to prove yourself, and it took me a long time to understand that. And it's not like you will only ever love shitsongs, because no one is That Vapid, so don't worry.

Nick Hornby ha logrado compartir 31 canciones que para el significaron en algún momento de su vida algo. De estas canciones probablemente conocía 4 o 5 , las otras fueron ir a la aplicación spotify y buscarlas, con cada capítulo la siguiente canción y así sucesivamente. Es entonces cuando el libro se empieza a explicar solo. Si deseas leer sobre canciones , música y vivencias este libro sería un recomendado.

Can’t believe the same person who wrote High Fidelity wrote a book about music that is so… bland? In the first few pages he noted that the essays aren’t filled with “straightforward time-and-place connections” which is a shame because I found those to be the only moments where the book really shined. A few high ceilings but equally low floors.

3 stars is probably kinder than what I should be giving it. I love nick hornby, I love music, I love high fidelity and yet this was a bit of a boring read. I think I was hoping for more interesting critique on the songs he chose, but instead it was boring anecdotes. He also contradicted himself by saying how you shouldnt be judged for liking pop music, and then judged others. It's really boring when people try to define what pop music (isn't almost everything pop?). Still cool to see what artists/songs he picked.

La educación sentimental

Amo a Hornby, todas las novelas que leí de él o las películas de las que escribió el guión me parecieron siempre muy buenas. Es un escritor que sale de la endogamia, no habla tanto de libros y escritores sino de fútbol y música y eso logra bajarlo al ras de la propia vida y convertirlo en el rey de la onda.

Digámoslo claro, este libro se lo publicaron porque es él, porque sabe que su firma basta como para vender varios ejemplares de lo que sea; aunque se trate, como es este caso, del repaso de 31 de sus canciones favoritas, o las que marcaron su vida. Obviamente, como todo buen libro, no es solamente eso, las canciones son una excusa para hablar de una filosofía y experiencias de vida. No falta la canción que elige para su funeral, la que escuchaba en su infancia y las que escucha de adulto. Es muy divertido cuando habla de Heartbreaker de Zeppelin y conmovedor cuando habla de la preferida de su hijo con autismo. Fue publicado en el 2002 y en un capítulo hace un alegato sobre las disquerías independientes y queda casi un testimonio arqueológico.

Está bien el libro, es simpático, pero la verdad es que se me hizo un poco largo. Hay una playlist de Spotify con las canciones mencionadas en este libro que está buena para ir escuchándola a medida que se avanza con el libro.

I'm an essay adorer. It's easily my favorite literary form and it's frighteningly hard to write. David Foster Wallace, Aldo Leopold, and Robert Fulghum have been my Three Musketeers of the craft for nearly a decade. Theirs are the essays that have challenged and thrilled me, bite-size and powerful, or brooding and sincere and sprawling. "Consider the Lobster" and "Thinking Like A Mountain" and passages from "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten" have swum around my consciousness like shadows, inspiring thoughtful analysis and manifesting into lesson plans with my ELA students. Others have traveled to that threshold, but not crossed it. Now, I'm adding Hornby, without any equivocation. Strangely enough, I don't have a great fondness for most of his fiction. Yet, his "Songbook" reads as a paean to music and the indelible intertwining it has with adolescence. Hornby connects to Nelly Furtado and Rufus Wainwright, to D'Angelo and Badly Drawn Boy. Just as memory is 95% taste and smell, so music is similarly triggering of heartfelt and nostalgic flashbacks. Rueful and unflinchingly honest and passionately devout, I'll forgive the no-one-cares-about-the-queen comment and Hornby's sarcastic remark that classical music doesn't make you feel anything, because the rest of this was absolute gold.

Hornby loves pop, and he's fascinated by how it transcends its own status to become 'pop culture'. Songbook is, in many ways, a testament to how he sees music and the function it should serve in his life. The song choices matter less than the way he writes about them. Throughout we get some wonderfully written and heartfelt stories that illustrate the power of music on the mundane. Towards the end, we also get some Hornby music criticism, which is just delightful and, as always, extremely well-observed. A breezy, good-natured book.