An absolute blast to read. It had me rediscovering my love for old songs, finding love for new ones, and thinking about why they move me so much.

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.

Enjoyed this quick read - a toss between three and four stars. Funny, touching, irreverent and yet appreciative at the same time. It’s not really about the song choices here, but his appreciation for the art and skill and craft and how music moves him/us - I think I can relate.

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.

I really like Nick Hornby, but we have different definitions of what is pop music. Also, I was annoyed by how often he mentioned The Clash, but we never listen to one of their songs. Sigh. Still a Nick Hornby fan though!

I am not quite the music snob as Mr. Hornby, and his music taste is while not completely unlike like my own, not quite in the same radar. Still, I just loved his passion about music and enjoyed this quite a bit. I was especially touched on his section about music and its connection to his autistic son.

the original hardcover edition is the one to get. it's all made up nice to resemble a mix tape you made back in high school and handed, sweaty palm and all, to the girl you were madly in love with. she was all long brown hair and old striped izod shirts that were hand-me-downs from her older brother or father. and afterwards. days later. you sat on a guardrail in a parking lot and talked about the songs. and the sun was setting over telephone wires on beat-up cars and still. it was a perfect landscape. and you held hands and looked her in the eye and watched the last light leave the day. that is pretty much this book.

"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).

3.5

Este libro de Nick Hornby es una amable colección de ensayos en los que el autor explora de manera autobiográfica su relación con la música a través de 31 canciones que le gustan. No las que considera las mejores del mundo, sino simplemente aquellas que le despiertan algo, que lo transportan a un momento, a alguna etapa de la vida, a algún estado de ánimo, a un concepto.
Quizás yo no soy lo suficientemente melómana para este libro. Quizás los gustos de Hornby están estrictamente ceñidos a un ambiente anglosajón (lo cual no es un problema en sí, él es inglés y es lógico que esa sea su banda sonora). Esto hace que, al leerlo, me costara conectar porque esas referencias, por geografía, por falta de cultura general, por distancias generacionales, etc., a mí me quedaban un poco perdidas.
Esto no significa que haya sido una pérdida de tiempo. Muy por el contrario, uno puede escuchar a un físico apasionado hablar de Einstein sin entender ni jota y aún así admirarse y disfrutar con la pasión con la que habla. La música, por otra parte, la música popular, es más accesible para todos que la física. Aunque no tengamos la misma experiencia que Nick Hornby con cierta banda, nuestra mente inmediatamente compara experiencias, elabora listas personales.
Así, el libro brilla más para mí cuando toca experiencias universales. Particularmente conmovedores son los ensayos en que se refiere a su hijo.
Es mi primera introducción a leer a Hornby -extraño lugar para empezar, eso seguro-y me quedo con ganas de seguir. Tiene una sencillez encantadora, un universo urbano de hombre rockero sensible que me resulta muy simpático.

Nick Hornby has been one of my favorite writers of the last quarter century, especially his novels High Fidelity and Fever Pitch. I enjoyed his curated lists of popular music he loves, woven in with an always interesting (to me at least) stream of consciousness along various theme lines. His list of 31 favorite songs is eclectic, spans both sides of the pond and has a nice combination of the critically acclaimed we're supposed to like and guilty pleasures (Jackson Browne anyone?). The new (for the edition I read) 15 albums section at the end starts well but ends up less organized and somehow incomplete. I enjoyed playing the songs while reading and realized I haven't listened to nearly enough Teenage Fan Club, Aimee Mann, Steve Earle or Los Lobos in this century. I also loved "So I'll Run" by Butch Hancock & Marce LaCouture and how it ties in to High Fidelity. I even listened to the list of "Some New Favorite" 2002/2003 songs added to the final page of the paperback edition I read. Good fun, all in all.

"The dance floor is still, to me, the social equivalent of the North Sea during English seaside holidays - something to be treated with the utmost fear and caution, something you walk toward and away from over a period of several hours while battling with your own courage, something you plunge into briefly and uncomfortably while every corpuscle in your blood scrams at you to get out before it's too late, something that leaves lots of important parts of you feeling shriveled." p128

In 26 essays Hornby covers 31 songs and, in particular, which elements of each emotionally resonate with him. The song choice is fantastic, ranging from tunes by Springsteen, to Royksöpp, to Nelly Furtardo, and all the way back to Patti Smith. My edition also includes 5 additional essays, covering 14 albums, written for the New Yorker.

Here Hornby truly captures what makes us love pop music. Written in his usual provocative yet free-flowing style, I can't say I agreed with every take, but it was enough to make me laugh and think. It's fun to listen to songs before and after each essay, they really do push you to re-evaluate your opinions. It turned me on to a few new favourites, namely "Born For Me" by Paul Westerberg. Truth be told, whilst I love the Replacements his solo material had never encapsulated me. I didn't even like the song much when I first listened to it before reading the essay; however, on my succeeding listen my doubts were soothed. The extra essays, whilst intriguing, are nowhere near as convicting as the rest of the book. Perhaps that's what happens when writing for the New Yorker. With that being said, Hornby's writing on Aimee Mann and Steve Earle are worthwhile.

All in all, as with the rest of Hornby's work, I can't recommend this enough to any intelligent individual obsessed with pop culture and, most importantly, music.

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.