Haciendo bandera del abandono de aquellos libros que no tenemos ganas de leer, pienso que en la adolescencia me hubiese enganchado con el juego de escuchar y conocer cada una de las canciones elegidas por Hornby, que me cae muy simpático por haber visto adaptaciones como High fidelity o About a boy, para luego sumergirme en la lectura de estos artículos.
En esos años de leer con avidez suplementos jóvenes y revistas como Los inrockuptibles o la Rolling Stone, este libro hubiese encajado a la perfección.
Hoy en día, simplemente prefiero estar leyendo otras cosas.

Libro cortito y fácil de leer que recomiendo si, como en mi caso, te gusta mucho Nick Hornby.
La idea es muy simple, Hornby usa 31 canciones como hilo conductor para contar anécdotas que de una u otra forma están relacionadas con la canción de ese capítulo.
No solo usa estas canciones para contar anécdotas o vivencias, también para hablar sobre asuntos musicales más propiamente dichos, como pueden ser los solos de guitarras eternos, la capacidad que tiene el pop para hablar de nada y todo a la vez, la necesidad de escuchar letras más maduras a medida que vas creciendo, aún con el disfrute de descubrir una canción simple de vez en cuando, etcétera.
Es un libro que ayuda a entender que muchas personas sentimos de una forma u otra que la música nos acompaña a todas partes, incluso cuando no nos damos cuenta.

Reading '31 Songs' is a bit like how I might imagine going out to the pub with Nick Hornby (in itself no bad thing I'm sure) just for a couple of beers and a general, not hugely insightful, chat about music - and therein lies the problem.

Whilst ostensibly a book about 31 songs - this comprises vague ideas and thoughts sometimes tenuously connected (although not always) with each song , but that's about it - there's nothing seemingly passionate or heartfelt concerning said songs.

'31 Songs' is therefore not ostensibly bad in itself, there is just a lack of focus and direction - this feels very much like Hornby treading water and is certainly here not at his best.

In summary - a missed opportunity.

I don't share much of Hornby's musical opinions, whether it be his inclinations towards Bruce Springsteen and Nelly Furtado or his disavowal of jazz and classical. It's still interesting to hear what other people like, and, as with his book reviews for the Believer, he's at his humorous best when dissecting the minutiae of pop culture and quibbles of taste. With some fun illustrations by Marcel Dzama.

I wavered between giving this book three or four stars, but decided on three because of several essays in the middle that I didn't find particularly interesting and could have done without. In general, these essays provide an insightful look at music in general, how it plays a part in our lives and its impact on culture.

Because the essays are written by Nick Hornby, they are often quite funny, and almost always well-crafted. I love his general lack of pretension about his music tastes, and that he recognizes he's a middle-aged white man who probably isn't always the best judge of modern music (and he's okay with that).

I have not heard many of the songs he wrote about, but that didn't matter. The songs themselves were often only periphery to the main points he was trying to make about culture or music tastes or the importance of music in our lives. I thought the first few essays started off strong, and then the book started to lag in the middle, but overall I enjoyed it.

My edition also came with five extra essays reprinted from The New Yorker, but most of them were album reviews and didn't feel like they fit with the rest of the book. Still, even album reviews are quite insightful in the hands of Hornsby. And the fifth of these essays, where Hornby decides to listen to the 10 best-selling albums in the U.S. based on the Billboard charts, contains one of the best and funniest insults I've heard of a band's lyrics (but I'll let you read for yourself).

Nick Hornby wrote what I consider to be my favorite book, High Fidelity, in which a music-obsessed man makes lists of his favorite songs and ponders his past romantic relationships. Considering Songbook is essentially a Hornby biography, as told through his favorite songs, I'm actually surprised I hadn't read it before.

I love hearing Hornby talk about the songs that he's passionate about. That's a huge part of why I love High Fidelity. Even if I don't know the music, I admire the love for this music. It's similar to how I feel about the writing of Chuck Klosterman. What makes Songbook so interesting to me is that I'm not familiar with most of these songs as it is, so I decided to listen to each of these songs - most for the first time - as I read about them. I think I was only familiar with about a fifth of them, and I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that I found myself more engaged with the chapters about the songs I already knew, as opposed to the ones I was going ignorant about.

Yet as I think about this book a few days after I finished it, I can't help but wishing Songbook had been one thing or the other. It's sort of hard to write about why some of your favorite songs are your favorite songs, without explaining their importance in your life, but I almost wish Hornby had been allowed to either go into more depth about the songs, or more in depth about his life and how it relates to these songs. Each chapter is incredibly short, and I wanted Hornby to dig a big deeper. I almost felt like right as I was learning so much about Hornby's favorite local record store, his autistic son, or the importance of Jackson Browne to him dealing with his divorce, the chapter would end and a whole new story would begin.

But it's always wonderful to have an opportunity to read Hornby on entertainment that means something to him, and Songbook is a great primer into the music that made him. I just wish there was more of it.

Nick Hornby, autor de “Alta Fidelidad” y “About a Boy” escribe un libro sobre el impacto que han tenido 31 canciones en su vida. No siempre son recuerdos, ni cómo estas canciones afectaron como banda sonora de sus días, sino que usa cada una como una excusa para reflexionar distintos aspectos de la música en nuestras vidas. Desde recitales remotos y extraños que nos llegan al alma sin haberlo esperado, la magia de las bandas que hacen cut-up (música a partir de música existente), que se enfrenta a los prejuicios contra el Pop o la música country.  Hornby, cuya obra está atravesada por la música, escribe un libro que sirve para zambullirse en un mar de música nueva, vista a través de la lupa de un tipo que sabe.

De forma entretenida y humana, nos pone en contacto con artistas por un camino de vivencias muy bajadas a tierra, muy humanas. Conectando la música de “Badly Drawn Boy” (Que hizo la música de su película “About a Boy”) con su hijo autista o la escalofriante “Franky Teardrop” de Suicide con la necesidad de usar la música como método de escape de un mundo cruel y salvaje, Hornby expande nuestras fronteras musicales y lo hace de forma tan humilde y entendida que no se puede dejar de lado.

Hay una playlist en Spotify dónde estan reunidas muchas (no todas) las canciones del libro, así que les dejo el link:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1r4...

Tal como su título ya da a entender, '31 canciones' se trata de una disección de 31 canciones que por diversos motivos han impactado y llegado al autor. No importa que la lista que ha escogido Hornby no tenga ningún parecido con la que hubiéramos escogido nosotros, ni que ni siquiera hayamos oído las canciones de las que habla, porque consigue transmitir perfectamente el amor que siente por estas canciones en concreto, y por la música en general, con un estilo que mezcla crítica musical, ensayo y autobiografía. Hay momentos verdaderamente memorables: como cuando defiende la "música pop" ante los que la consideran superficial y simplona; cuando relata el efecto que tiene la música en su hijo autista; cuando explica lo que es adorar un grupo que nadie conoce o descubrir una canción nueva que logra emocionarnos; cuando nos cuenta cómo en su juventud sólo adoraba (y se decidía a escuchar sólo) música "ruidosa", pero que con el pasar de los años ha ido perdiendo todos sus prejuicios musicales.

Sin embargo, mi momento preferido es cuando nos cuenta cómo podemos llegar a odiar una canción que habíamos descubierto por casualidad, simplemente porque la empiezan a poner a todas partes y a todas horas. Es algo que inevitablemente nos habrá pasado a muchos y algo que yo nunca hasta ahora me había parado a analizar. Hornby argumenta que es porque es imposible "amar o conectar con una música que está tan omnipresente como el monóxido de carbono", porque la música es algo que nos habla directamente a nosotros, sobre nuestra intimidad. Y a partir de aquí también he descubierto porque siempre es tan especial encontrar en la radio esa canción que para ti es en algun modo especial, simplemente porque es la oportunidad de compartir por una vez algo que tienes muy dentro, algo que te define como persona. Y por todo esto creo que es un libro imprescindible para todos los que aman la música.

Rummaging through the music section of my library one day, I found Songbook by Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and About A Boy, and immediately brought it home. There’s nothing better than coming across someone who enjoys music and can write about it with skill and verve.

Songbook is basically a collection of reflections on 31 songs, not his all-time “best of” list, but rather, songs which he’s listened to over and over again and which he wanted to write something about. Thus he has essays on everything from Nelly Furtado’s “Fly Like A Bird” and Ben Folds Five’s “Smoke” to Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan tunes. The book even comes with an audio CD containing 11 of the 31 songs he wrote about.

Hornby refrains from turning the chapters into blog-like entries and talking about what was happening in his life at the time he was listening. Instead, he waxes almost poetically on issues like the throw-away culture which outputs current pop music and how it still manages to produce intelligent, soulful compositions; he reflects on the difference between sad songs about work versus sad songs about relationships; he even talks about generational differences, and touches on music and social change. It’s not philosophy, as much as a chance to talk about pop music intelligently and insightfully.

NUGGET OF WISDOM

The best nugget of wisdom I took away from the book: “Dave Eggers has a theory that we play songs over and over, those of us who do, because we have to ’solve’ them.”

I remember doing exactly that– placing an mp3 on constant repeat over a period of time — in order to squeeze the juice out of it, to get at its message, its point, its truth. To enjoy its aural and intellectual stimulus, and allow it to carry me forward.

FAVORITE QUOTE

“A couple of times a year I make myself a tape to play in the car, a tape full of all the new songs I’ve loved over the previous few months, and every time I finish one I can’t believe that there’ll be another. Yet there always is, and I can’t wait for the next one; you only need a few hundred more things like that, and you’ve got a life worth living.”

If you love pop music and intelligent writing, then you will relish Hornby’s Songbook. It is a hopeful, insightful read with its own built-in soundtrack. Worth it!

Originally posted on my blog:
http://lionel.valdellon.com/?p=341

had to read this book for a music class. ya it sucks dude. i get everyone has their opinions but Hornbys a lil shit head. he acts as if what he says is fact. it’s an insufferable book where he just talks abt how a song means something to him and then acts as if he’s all deep and can relate it to people. like no thank you, when he talks about more serious topics in the book it comes from a place of privilege and how he talks about it is very prejudiced. At one point he’s talking about Frankie Teardrop by suicide and it’s a song about Frankie who is working class works two jobs can’t make ends meet has a wife and new born to support and the stress gets to him and he kills his family and himself. Hornby basically says “if you’re frankie why would you listen to bad music like this? when you can listen to more upbeat and happy music” … Hornby… shut. the. fuck. up. I don’t want to listen to fucking colby caillat while going through a hard time and not knowing if i’m gonna make it through this economy. People listening to upbeat and happy music isn’t gonna fix the world. He claims that love songs are the only type of songs that stand the test of time and how they’re just so good. like dude shut up it’s so crazy to think that someone could be so narcissistic to write a book about songs that they like and get it published. it’s also crazy that people bought the book. why is anyone so invested in another persons life, that they don’t know! that they would buy a book about songs he likes? AND IT GOES FOR LIKE $20 YOURE SPENDING $20 TO READ ABOUT SONGS THAT SOMEONE LIKES??? If you’re really that in need of music just go on spotify and then genius the lyrics so you can “know what the songs about” and can act all deep and better than thou when you drop that music knowledge on your friends who will eventually leave because they get so fed up and tired of you acting as if you’re so smart and deep for thinking about the meaning behind WAP by Cardi B

Hornby has a net worth of 22 MILLION dollars. i’m not taking advice or listening to a dude who writes shitty books and the only people who really like them are rich white dudes and white women who clutch their pearls the second a poc gets within a 5 mile radius of them.

Once again Hornby's affectionate and intelligent criticism reminds me why I bothered with him in the first place.

Nick Hornby is a good writer and it is obvious with this book. But this was a really boring book. As I was reading about songs I didn't know or could care about I wondered how this book even got made and who would really buy it. I fill like it was something he just did to fulfill an obligation. I'm glad I could read it in a day.

I won this book on Goodreads and thank the publisher for my copy.