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.

My favorite book I read last year was Ten Years in The Tub, Nick Hornby’s collection of columns from The Believer detailing his book reading and purchasing each month. Being a huge music fan as well, I was eager to read Songbook (originally published as 31 Songs, then rereleased with a few bonus essays) Hornby’s collection of essays on various songs and albums. Apparently when this book was first released, a few versions of it came with CDs containing either 11 or even 18 of the 31 songs, so readers could hear these mostly obscure songs that Hornby has chosen to write about. However in the distant future of 2017, readers can now just log on Youtube and listen to every song or album discussed in this book while reading the corresponding chapters.

I’m a pretty big music junky, but apparently my knowledge of Hornby’s favorites was lacking as prior to reading this I only knew the following tracks:
· “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen
· “I’m Like a Bird” by Nelly Furtado”
· “Heartbreaker” by Led Zeppelin
· “Samba Pa Ti” by Santana
· “Mama, You Been On My Mind” by Rod Stewart
· “Rain” by the Beatles
· “Smoke” by Ben Folds Five
· “Caravan” by Van Morrison
· “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Gregory Isaacs (I think we all know the original, but I was unfamiliar with this version)
· “Late for the Sky” by Jackson Browne

That’s only ten of thirty one tracks, so I’m going to assume that part of Hornby’s goal was to focus on music that isn’t already known by the masses. I faired much better on his discussion of albums, owning all of the ones he discussed in depth except for a Steve Earle album, and I’ve got a few others by that artist. On a related note I enjoyed the album chapters the most, although if you told me up front Nick Hornby would spend a few pages discussing Nick Cave, Aimee Mann or Blink-182 I could predict with absolute certainty that I would enjoy it.

I wish I could say I fell in love with several new songs by reading this book, but the songs I was unfamiliar with were all pleasant enough but not so amazing that I had to go out and purchase on my own. The one exception was “Frankie Teardrop” by Suicide, which was an exception because it wasn’t pleasant but instead a curiosity on unpleasantness stretching out for 10 minutes.

Right away I guess this book loses points compared to Ten Years in the Tub, as I discovered several books and authors I loved from reading that, whereas my musical horizons were not expanded by Songbook (in terms of knowledge, yes, but as of yet no new favorites). As for the writing itself, this is a very quick read with typically 5 to 7 not particularly dense pages about Hornby’s relationship to each song (how he discovered it, how often he listens to it, how it compares to other music he enjoys). My favorite music criticism tends to involve some use of the first person as music is very subjective. In order to trust somebody else’s opinion on music I need some assurances that they have good taste. When I was through with this I had a good understanding of Hornby's musical tastes in relation to my own styles of enjoyment.

I suspect the most common criticism of Mr. Hornby’s music writing will be his preference for songs that conform to the pop style and format. The final chapter in the book is a review of the top ten albums of the previous year, and Hornby's critiques of Destiny's Child, Blink-182, Linkin Park, P. Diddy and others shows a definite preference for music that would be classified as "dad rock" or "oldies" by many people under the age of 30 or so today. I'll go on record as saying that I didn't care for a lot of those albums when they came out as well, but I can recognize that several of them resulted in tracks that are still radio favorites 15+ years later, while Hornby's only song he really appreciated from the list was "Falling" by Alicia Keys.

The real joy in reading this book is in Hornby's conversational style and charming anecdotes that reveal more about him than the music he is writing about. Hornby's openness about the challenges of dealing with an autistic child, the changing perceptions of his work once he became famous and his habits upon purchasing box sets stand out in terms of enjoyable sections the reader will take away and retain. Much like Fever Pitch or Ten Years in the Tub, Hornby is upfront that the writing is autobiographical and I suspect readers familiar with his other writing will have a similar reaction (positive or negative) to his work in Songbook.

This is not a review, just notes about some of the types of songs identified/areas for discussion:


-Songs that perfectly encapsulate a moment in time
-Songs that help you express a part of your identity
-Pop songs/probable one-hit wonders "of the moment" that you can't shake, and that you want to play over and over
-Songs that you used to listen to all the time when you were younger, but that only fit into your life on specific occasions now
-Songs that reveal God at work
-Cover versions of songs that reveal something new about that song
-Songs that are the best representations of artists we are "supposed" to like/appreciate
-Songs that provide an escape and make you feel better about life
-Songs whose meanings to you change over time due to your own life experiences
-Songs you'd like played at your funeral/that provide space for reflection
-Songs you like because you heard them live, and that capture a mood and feeling you had in that moment, or that were just so good live that it changed the way you heard them permanently
-Songs your children like, or that signify something you're proud of passing onto your children
-Songs that represent something essential about a place/national identity that is important to you
-Songs that grow on you as you've aged
-Songs you don't think are great, but that you can't imagine going through life without
-Songs that capture a specific time in your life that has passed and probably will not return

my thoughts on this book probably lean more towards 2.5/5 stars, but i’ll rate it a 3 simply because nick hornby writes about music in a way that reflects how i feel about music, and that’s a wonder. although it felt a bit repetitive & i didn’t particularly care about his experience with each song (no offense, just not super interested in what these specific songs that are entirely out of my generation’s consciousness mean to a middle aged white dude), the way that hornby writes about music is astounding. he captures the innate feeling you get when you find a song that changes you. with that in mind, here are some of the songs that make me feel that way too (a short list, given my age, but one that is worth sharing).

in no particular order:

ladders by mac miller - everything about this song, from the lyrics to the track itself, makes me very aware of my own mortality somehow. it poses a question: if nothing has any meaning and we inevitably turn to dust, what do we do in the meantime? it’s a good question, and the song gives a better answer - we find a way.

green light by lorde - this song is angry in a way that i love. we’re told to bottle our anger so often, but lorde unleashes it in this song & we’re all better for it. she lets herself be angry & i can see myself in the way she spits the lyrics out. this song gives me permission to hold my grudges, but gives me permission to move on too. i love it.

face by brockhampton - i’m not religious, but this song is something spiritual for me. i don’t know what it is, but this song just cements the importance of love in my mind & the wonders that it brings. it’s sad, it’s melodic, and it’s truly lovely.

not your muse by celeste - this song asserts itself as individual in a way that is refreshing and awesome. the first time i heard this song, i felt understood in a way that i never have before. the way that celeste asserts her independence from her art & her lover & anything that isn’t herself is beautiful. it’s a fighting song.

Nick Hornby contemplates the souls connection to music, and how it shapes our lives and culture while sharing with us 31 of his own favourite tunes and his personal connection to them. Hornby's essays, as with all his novels, are beautifully written with equal parts humour and insight and even if you’re unfamiliar with the song in that chapter, completely relatable.

I made a point to listen to every song while reading each chapter which added to my enjoyment as well as introduced me to some gems I’d never heard before.

A must read for those with music running through their veins.