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A review by ambergold
Songbook by Nick Hornby
4.0
This book has made my life so much better while reading it that I've been watching the "percentage read" tick up on my Kindle with the doomed sensation of a mother waiting for her newborn to wake up and start screaming. It's nonfiction and consists of 26 essays that chronicle Hornby's 31 favorite songs at the time (early 2000s). Hornby's an obsessive music fan who did some serious music journalism in his time, and his deep knowledge shows, but better than that is the breezy, sardonic, casual style in which he writes, as he tells anecdotes about hearing the songs for the first time and how his personal life interwove and interacted with each song, as well as tracing the band's roots and musical influences.
The book isn't riveting: it's discursive and *satisfying* instead, like dipping into a sauna and feeling the world fall away. Having read four of his novels and (nearly) two of his nonfiction, if he rewrote the phonebook, I'd read it. And this, despite the fact our musical tastes just barely overlap! (Fun fact: someone has, of course, made a Spotify playlist of his choices: it's called "Nick Hornby's 31 Songs").
The book isn't riveting: it's discursive and *satisfying* instead, like dipping into a sauna and feeling the world fall away. Having read four of his novels and (nearly) two of his nonfiction, if he rewrote the phonebook, I'd read it. And this, despite the fact our musical tastes just barely overlap! (Fun fact: someone has, of course, made a Spotify playlist of his choices: it's called "Nick Hornby's 31 Songs").