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itsolivia's review against another edition
1.0
The deal: Jessica Hopper is a music critic, producer, and author based in Chicago. She’s written for Rolling Stone, GQ, Pitchfork, etc. This is her memoir.
Is it worth it?: Nope. Memoir is a very far cry from the reality I experienced here. Imagine if you took five years worth of (very short) journal entries then published them in their exact form, completely out of order. I’d actually even be okay with that as a premise, but unfortunately each entry reads more like a travel log than any kind of affecting vignette. There is limited beauty, but a whole lot of riding bikes, seeing friends on the street, and going to shows at Empty Bottle, all sans elaboration or feeling.
Pairs well with: cycling as a personality trait, Rainbo Club, getting angry about gentrification without acknowledging that you are part of the problem
D
Is it worth it?: Nope. Memoir is a very far cry from the reality I experienced here. Imagine if you took five years worth of (very short) journal entries then published them in their exact form, completely out of order. I’d actually even be okay with that as a premise, but unfortunately each entry reads more like a travel log than any kind of affecting vignette. There is limited beauty, but a whole lot of riding bikes, seeing friends on the street, and going to shows at Empty Bottle, all sans elaboration or feeling.
Pairs well with: cycling as a personality trait, Rainbo Club, getting angry about gentrification without acknowledging that you are part of the problem
D
marabuckeye's review against another edition
3.0
Great writing and very funny, I just wish I knew more of the references to bands and people she mentions. She has great perspective on the character of Chicago.
gabesteller's review against another edition
4.0
Memoir of Biking and going to shows in the Early 2000's in Chicago. Read cuz I bike! and I go to Shows! And I live in Chicago! although I've had this book for like 3 years I waited till i knew the city (And Lydia recommended it again) to actually read.
My main quibble is that Jessica Hopper does not mention being hit by a car while on her bike, which is inaccurate to the life of the daily Chicago biker according to anecdotal and personal experience.
As for the good stuff I loooved the structure, which is like 1-3 page vignettes mixed up chronologically
but roughly sorted by theme, which felt closer to the feeling of memory and weaves this emotional portrait of the years when Hopper was striving and finding her voice.
But it also makes for this sense of fleetingness, and melancholy mixed with joie de vivre, that ,I don't know, it left me with a slightly hollow feeling. Theres a sense that while Jessica makes it out, not a lot other people do, and I suppose thats just life. hmmm
anyway was fun and often beautiful, even if it left me sorta uneasy. TY 4 rec lydia
My main quibble is that Jessica Hopper does not mention being hit by a car while on her bike, which is inaccurate to the life of the daily Chicago biker according to anecdotal and personal experience.
As for the good stuff I loooved the structure, which is like 1-3 page vignettes mixed up chronologically
but roughly sorted by theme, which felt closer to the feeling of memory and weaves this emotional portrait of the years when Hopper was striving and finding her voice.
But it also makes for this sense of fleetingness, and melancholy mixed with joie de vivre, that ,I don't know, it left me with a slightly hollow feeling. Theres a sense that while Jessica makes it out, not a lot other people do, and I suppose thats just life. hmmm
anyway was fun and often beautiful, even if it left me sorta uneasy. TY 4 rec lydia
beatrice_k's review against another edition
5.0
Pitch perfect. Quick, visceral, punk and loving and lovely. Reading this made me feel like a hopeful teen learning how to be a cool adult.
writesdave's review
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Written alternately in sneering detachment spiced with irony and poetically vivid prose, "Night Moves" serves as a love letter to a time and place. Whether on two wheels or two feet, Hopper guides you through mid-oughts Chicago, taking the reader inside her life as a girl-about-town at all hours. The descriptions merit five stars, but too much of the prose about music and culture called to mind an eye-rolling hipster talking at you through a sigh, "If you have to ask you'll never know." Indeed, I had heard of very few of the namechecked musicians, which would have given Jessica and her friends a great deal of amusement at the hick who's never heard of ____.
Nonetheless, this is for people who love Chicago, music and the music of Chicago, which isn't always something you can play or compose.
Nonetheless, this is for people who love Chicago, music and the music of Chicago, which isn't always something you can play or compose.
danielwest's review against another edition
4.0
If Jessica Hopper had been coming up in the 2010's and biking through Wicker, Ukrainian Village, and West Town, perhaps she would have accompanied her bike rides with a pair of bluetooth headphones and a punk mixtape, as long as it didn't blot out the sounds of the city. But since the working-class poetry of Night Moves takes place in the early 00's, it seems that Hopper has substituted a cinematic soundtrack for a reader. The openness with which Hopper writes makes it clear that we're an essential piece of the story. Reading this book before and after my own nights out in these same neighborhoods transforms my own night moves--and the changes that these neighborhoods have gone through in a decade and a half--into the soundtrack for Hopper's writing, influencing my experience of Night Moves and resulting in a nostalgia for what Chicago has lost, a respect for what Chicago holds firm, and a sensitivity for what Chicago will become.