Very nice trip through Nicks music experiences and very nicely, funny and easy to read. If you like music, you like this book.

Curious what he thinks about Eminem nowadays, so if you read this Nick let me know ok?

I probably bought this book when it first came out. This is a mixed tape of a book. It isn't a book of music criticism. It is a love letter to music that he likes.

I tried to listen to the songs that he wrote about as I read the pieces. In the early 2000's, it wasn't always possible to find these things. I gave up and just dove in where I knew the music. A few years back, I tried a second time. Spotify wasn't yet the total behemoth. I still couldn't find everything. I tried to make a playlist and couldn't get it to work.

Finally, this past year I gave up and took which versions were available rather than track em all down. This is a guy who is often accused of not writing smart. That doesn't mean that he can't say something observant or relevant. I like his partially put upon everyday guy persona. I would hazard that it is a much easier one to carry off than pretending that you are smarter than you are.

When it comes to pop music and curmudgeonly attitudes, it works. This is a pleasant read and some of the same conversations I have had over beer with another friend who is musically inclined, we have had some of the same preoccupations. This is like one of those bull sessions.

Feel free to have your opinions. You can't dismiss anything he totally says. Sure, there are some dumb moments. But when has drinking and talking about music produced anything smart? This is fun and I enjoyed it. Sometimes, it was thoughtful. Kinda like music. Don't think too hard. Enjoy it.

I can’t do a better job of summarizing this than that New York Times blurb on the cover. What a pleasure, as always, to spend time with Nick Hornby, one of my author gods. I envy his talent, but I love him even more than I envy him. These essays were all so good, and they reminded me that I need to make an effort to listen to music more. Ever since the proliferation of podcasts and my embrace of audiobooks, my music consumption has declined, and it is very much to my detriment. When I think to listen to music in the car or while I’m cooking, I love it. It’s just making the choice to do so. I need to be like my friends Jared and Mike and carve out regular chunks of time where listening to music is the thing that I am doing, not something I multitask with other things.

Music is such a personal experience that, in the course of writing about 31 songs, one is bound to alienate some and endear oneself to others, possibly at the same time. I think that's why I found it difficult to rate this book. I was both delighted by it and disappointed with it. Some lines were illuminating and others made me laugh out loud. But I found large sections irrelevant and actually skipped a lot of it. The pace felt schizophrenic and overwhelming, as he pulled in random tidbits from different parts of his life. Rather than writing a coherent response to it, I think I'll write down my thoughts in an equally schizophrenic and overwhelming list.

1. Two of my favorite songs were included in his analysis - Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road and Ani Difranco's You Had Time. The parts about them were difficult to read because he loved them for different reasons than I do. While this is completely understandable, it had the unexpected result of making me feel like my world was being reshaped. I have known and loved these songs in my own way for years. Suddenly, Nick Hornby is forcing me to look at them from HIS perspective and HIS life experiences. I don't like it. Hornby says that, in the end, "mostly all I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don't like them as much as I do." I would just add that I also get cross when other people don't like them for the same reasons that I do.

2. "If you love a song, love it enough for it to accompany you throughout the different stages of your life, then any specific memory is rubbed away by use." I've thought about this for some time and I don't know if I completely agree. I fell in love with both of the songs above in college. It happened at my desk next to the window in the apartment on Ridge Road. I don't remember any specific day I played them but I remember sitting back in my chair and singing along as the problem sets and papers that I was inevitably working on melted away. Likewise, I remember every other occasion that they have resurfaced in my life. For Thunder Road, I remember my delight when I unexpectedly found its lyrics snaking up the wall in a spiral staircase at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. I remember trying in vain to play it on youtube in the car while we were driving around Cleveland afterwards, for a car full of people who didn't particularly care and couldn't understand why I was so insistent upon them hearing it (see #1). I also remember the moment of happy surprise when I found it on NV's playlist as we were driving into Austin and his subsequent dismay when I played it at least once a day (usually much more) for the remaining week of the trip. Furthermore, to this day, I cannot listen to Arcade Fire's Neon Bible album without feeling like I was back in London commuting to work on the tube while reading Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind. So, in fact, I wholeheartedly disagree that a beloved song blends into your existence, losing its context and blurring out associations with your life. Rather, for me, it puts a spotlight on those moments in life and makes me more keenly aware of where I was and how I was feeling. But that, of course, is very specific to my relationship with music.

3. On defending Nelly Furtado's I'm Like A Bird and pop music in general (This one's for you, JM): "Yes, it's disposable. But then shouldn't we be sick of the 'Moonlight Sonata' by now? ... Or 'The Importance of Being Earnest?' They're empty! Nothing left! We sucked 'em dry! That's what gets me: the very people who are snotty about the disposability of pop will go over and over again to see Lady Bracknell say 'a handbag?' in a funny voice. They don't think that joke's exhausted itself?"

4. This one made me laugh. "Would it be possible to fuck to the tune of 'Let's Get It On' without laughing? (Not that there's anything wrong with laughing during sex, but laughter was not, I suspect, the sound that Marvin intended to provoke.)"

5. This is unrelated to music but also made me laugh. "My advice to young writers: never begin a title with a preposition, because you will find that it is impossible to utter or to write any sentence pertaining to your creation without sounding as if you have an especially pitiable stutter. 'He wanted to talk to me about About a Boy.' 'What about About a Boy?' 'Are you excited about About a boy?' And so on. I wonder if Steinbeck and his publisher got sick of it? 'What do you think of Of Mice and Men?'"

6. His description of Danny's (his autistic son) relationship with music is both heartbreaking and uplifting. "Though (Danny) has very little language, he has managed to find words for things he fears he might not be given unless he asks for them. In other words, there are some things so desirable that they can burst through the blanket of silence that smothers him, and music('goggo,' as he calls it), ranks right up there, along with crisps, and swimming, and biscuits, which is pretty much where I'd put it, too."

7. On being a Brit who loved America: "In the 1970s we were trying to live the American life, but without any of the things that make an American life bearable. What we did have was history, and this, apparently, was enough to make us feel superior... I would cheerfully have swapped England's entire heritage -- Stonehenge, Stratford, Wordsworth, Buckingham Palace, the lot -- for the ability to watch quiz shows in the morning."

8. "Dave Eggers has a theory that we play songs over and over, those of us who do, because we have to 'solve' them, and it's true that in our early relationship with, and courtship of, a new song, there is a stage which is akin to a sort of emotional puzzlement." I've never thought of it this way but I think this is spot on.

When I started writing this review, I gave this book 3 stars. After thinking through my schizophrenic list, I am now kicking it up to 4 stars. I think it is worth a read, if only to figure out what you agree and disagree with.

I won this book in a giveaway and I was excited about reading it. This book was terrible... I don't understand why the author chose to write a book about songs he likes. No story no plot. I was bored from the first chapter.

If you find the idea of locating a through line in an author's work, I suggest you give Nick Hornby a shot. Whether writing a novel like High Fidelity or a series of personal essays about pop music, as he does here in Songbook, at all times he is channeling a sort of middle class Brit aesthetic that I think of as "benign mix tape." I find it charming.

I gave this book to my husband over 20 years ago for us to read aloud and share. We finally started on that 6 years ago. And today we finished it! We shared and are sharing other books along the way but decided to push this one along to the end. We had good fun with some of it but we’re both glad it’s over.

Some of the essays are amusing, some interesting, some dated (given the massive changes to the music industry, it felt like historical fiction), and some boring. The songs were an intensely mixed bag. We sadly discovered nothing new that interested us.

My husband and I have strongly overlapping taste in music and the best part of sharing this read was our discussions. For that, Mr. Hornby, we thank you.

Witty and honest, as Nick Hornby usually is. There were a few phrases and descriptors that made me uncomfy. Surprisingly, the fact that I was not familiar with much of the music he reviews didn’t take away from the experience. It’s like a little time capsule from 2003.

Om man gillar Hornby och popmusik så är den här boken som en längre lättsam och kreativ pratstund efter en dekadent pizzalunch med två stora öl på ett sunkhak

Ofta välformulerat och inspirerande. Läsvärd.

This was my first introduction to Nick Hornby, and now that I've found an author who shares my feelings and taste in music, I'm completely willing--even more willing than I might be for a writer who's "only" as great as Hornby--to explore the novels he's written. For one, he's hilarious. I laughed and laughed deeply at his jokes (especially those regarding his Billboard exploration and songs to have sex to). And secondly, he has a writing style that's both candid and eloquent, serviceably invisible. My third point--though I have plenty more--is that he really brings back the mixtape. What I mean is that he adds a personal touch and certain amount of "Screw it, I do love Rod Stewart" that I find lacking in music websites and magazines (which I understand serve a different purpose than Songbook). Anyway, I seriously recommend that you set aside an afternoon, pull up the playlist, and enjoy.

"A couple of times a year I make myself a mix to play in the car, 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 they'll be another. Yet there always is, and I can't wait for the next one; you need only a few hundred more things like that, and you've got a life worth living."

I would classify this short book as part memoir, part music criticism, and part pop-culture manifesto. English novelist/essayist Nick Hornby dissects 30 pop songs and 15 pop albums in terms of musicality, lyrical content, production, et. al. I use the term "pop" loosely, as Hornby discusses music from several genres.

Although I consider my musical tastes to be somewhat eclectic, I will admit that several musicians Hornby made mention of, I found myself unfamiliar with. However, that didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book. For me, the best parts were when the author was able to make connections between emotions he felt while listening to his personal favorite songs, and the enjoyment we feel when we really, truly connect with a piece of music.

The biggest drawback I found was Hornby's tone, which I found to be condescending and even fairly jaded at times. He seemed to be very quick to judge some artists based on flippant observations. For example, in the last chapter, he makes mention of Eminem, and immediately writes Eminem's lyrics off as "...a Tourette's-like and apparently inexhaustible torrent of bile toward his fellow entertainers, his partners, and members of his family." Well, yes... but what about his skill as a lyricist? In a book devoted in large part to the criticism of music, it seems rather glib to pigeon-hole an artist like so.

Bottom line - although frustrating and short-sighted at times, this book had some meaningful insights as to how pop music shapes our lives in current culture, as well as how and why we benefit from listening to it. (Bonus: any book that mentions Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, and Eminem within a span of 50 pages is meaningful in its own right).

Absolute shit! Some terrible, terrible song choices - Nelly Furtado!! It's embarrasing! Like hearing your dad telling you he watched the fratellis on Jools Holland and thought they were great! Awful, awful book!