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It has been said often enough that baby boomers are a television generation, but High Fidelity reminds that in a way they are the record-album generation as well. This hilarious novel is obsessed with music; Hornby's narrator is an early thirtysomething bloke who runs a London record store. He sells albums recorded the old-fashioned way--on vinyl--and is having a tough time making other transitions as well, specifically to adulthood. The book is in one sense a love story, both sweet and interesting; most entertaining, though, are the hilarious arguments over arcane matters of pop music.
Book Description
Is it possible to share your life with someone whose record collection is incompatible with your own? Can people have terrible taste and still be worth knowing? Do songs about broken hearts and misery and loneliness mess up your life if consumed in excess?
For Rob Fleming, thirty-five years old, a pop addict and owner of a failing record shop, these are the sort of questions that need an answer, and soon. His girlfriend has just left him. Can he really go on living in a poky flat surrounded by vinyl and CDs or should he get a real home, a real family and a real job? Perhaps most difficult of all, will he ever be able to stop thinking about life in terms of the All Time Top Five bands, books, films, songs – even now that he’s been dumped again, the top five break-ups?
Memorable, sad and very, very funny, this is the truest book you will ever read about the things that really matter.
Average Customer Rating:
Hi-Fi
This is clearly my favourite book by Nick Hornby. In this book, Hornby mainly explores the male psyche (and is frighteningly accurate in its portrayal), human relationships (as seen from a typical guy's point-of-view) and music. The only other major Hornby obsession missing from this book is sports or football, to be specific (go find and read Fever Pitch).
Rob is the owner of a music store, Championship Vinyl and a loser who knows a thing or two about music and girls. He re-evaluates his life by making a top 5 list of break-ups when his live-in girlfriend Laura leaves him. In the process, he meets his ex-flames on the list and the teenager-living-in-a-30-odd-year-old-body of Rob comes of age. Finally, he reunites with Laura and as they say all's well that ends well.
A must read for grownup men and all women (and girls). Specifically, for grownup men who refuse to let go of their adolescence and for women who want to get a peek into the male psyche and understand why men will always be boys at heart.
Loser's guide to getting the girl
Rob Fleming, the "hero" of HIGH FIDELITY runs Championship Vinyl, a used record shop on a sidestreet in London (and I mean records...though there is much talk of compilation tapes and some evidence of CDs in this 1995 novel as well.) His girlfriend Laura has just walked out on him, prompting him to list his top five heartbreaks of all time. Compiliing lists of "top fives" (of anything, though mostly music-related things) is a very serious pastime for Rob and his equally adrift coworkers, both of whom are, believe it or not, worse at relationships with women than Rob. What follows is vintage Hornby--fast-pased storytelling, clever dialog (with women often outshining the men), and a real honest sense of the current zeitgeist for thirty-somethings. I only got about 40% of the musical references (the ones that go back to my era and tastes--Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles), but Hornby doesn't really include such references to tax the reader's memory, but rather to make statements about the characters who care so much about slight differences in taste. The abundant humor, however, doesn't deflect from the serious scrutiny Hornby lays to bear on the Rob & Laura's (Is this an ironic Dick Van Dyke Show reference?) relationship. In the end, Rob makes a compiliation tape for Laura, one that's "full of stuff she's heard of, and full of stuff she'd play." At last he is seeing her the way she is, not the way he thinks she should be. You can't help thinking, if you're at all romantic (or at least somewhat optimistic), that Rob and Laura just might make it. A fun read!
The Teenage Man
Rob is a teenager trapped in a thirty-five year-old man's body, or rather, he's a thirty- five year-old man who still thinks he's a teenager. Instead of moving on in life, he obsesses over past relationships and why they went wrong, beats himself up over his sexual abilities, and practically stalks his ex-girlfriend, whom he claims is responsible, at the moment, for everything that is wrong in his life. Like someone who hasn't yet acquired the maturity that comes with age, Rob prides himself in who he sleeps with, is incapable of having a real conversation with his mother, and considers his life a reflection of pop music. Though not all men are young in everyday behavior, they are young at heart, and the heart always plays a role at one time or another in life. This is a book for women to read to learn why men do the things they do. It is a book for men for the same reason.
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