More Selections from High Fidelity
The other night, it took me three books to find something to read. The first was something I found on the librarians' recommendations shelf: it was supposedly a historical novel, but turned out to be about witches and a courtesan in denial about her powers. Whatevs. The second was a murder mystery set in Virginia hunt-and-vineyard country; the book flap promised it would be all about winemaking, but 3 pages in, I realized that not only were the characterizations bad, but the wine thing was a gimmick to use terroir words to describe the landscape instead of actual writing. Bleh.
Lately I've been finding that my criteria for what I want to read is all about "nice". Nick Hornby, Bill Simmons, Lileks - they are all decent, nice guys who write about fluffy friendly things. Not sure what this mood is all about, but at least I have the entire Hornby oeuvre out from the library currently. Um. The other night, I started reading his Songbook, which in many ways feels like a companion to High Fidelity. The latter is about a guy with relationship issues, among which is being judgemental about people's unhip musical tastes. The book goes into detail about why the character likes certain songs and he adores making mix tapes. Songbook is an annotated mix tape of Hornby's fave songs - and even includes a CD of the songs discussed, which is good bc I don't know any of them. I keep passing signs for the new Broadway production of High Fidelity; I'm trying to remember if I read comments from Teachout or independently decided that it's a terrible idea, bc half of makes the book (and I assume the movie) so wonderful is the songs, whereas you'd have to license them and then it would be Nick Hornby's mix tape on Broadway, which seems less amusing, and would almost immediately be a period piece. Oh well, it's not my money.
Is there anything that man can't do? I finally gave up on Fever Pitch, the movie with Drew Barrymore, but then I found out that it was a remake of a movie with Colin Firth. why didn't anyone tell me this?!?! I've watched the opening credits so far, but it looks good :) Moreover, why didn't anyone tell me about his website?!?! Apparently Penguin UK has a great website for Hornby, with excerpts and additional features from his books, including a story about taking Colin Firth to an Arsenal game. I wanna watch Arsenal play Tottenham with Firth and Hornby!!! (and Bill Simmons, just to keep the cheering fair)
Anyhow, like I said, music, sport, books... one could say that I'm done with The Polysyllabic Spree, except that when I was two pages away from the end, I had to start over from the beginning, skimming the good bits and looking for books I particularly need to read. He has completely different tastes in books than I, but the way he writes makes me want to read them. His May '04 column (excerpt) about reading David Copperfield is fantastic. If you like Dickens, you owe it to yourself to read that column, if not the book. (Yes, I'm looking at you, meep.) I'm so glad I have a whole 'nuther book of reviews by him to read.
In other news... never let it be said I don't listen to suggestions from the LJ braintrust. With much kicking and screaming, I finally read the first book of the Empire of Man series by Weber and Ringo. When I was a kid, at some point all my toys got tossed into a large bin, such that some went missing and they were all jumbled together. I still remember the Christmas when I got that little farm, but after the great mixing, things on the farm were much more fun. I used to pretend that the farm was in an isolated place and the people of the farm had to find ways of growing food and foraging (in the great bin) for tools to improve their lives and of course fight off invaders. There was often a rival farm that wasn't doing so well but had less morals. In retrospect, my affinity for science fiction stories about stranded adventurers isn't so surprising, hm? Anyhow, this is me admitting I should've picked these books up months ago.
Lately I've been finding that my criteria for what I want to read is all about "nice". Nick Hornby, Bill Simmons, Lileks - they are all decent, nice guys who write about fluffy friendly things. Not sure what this mood is all about, but at least I have the entire Hornby oeuvre out from the library currently. Um. The other night, I started reading his Songbook, which in many ways feels like a companion to High Fidelity. The latter is about a guy with relationship issues, among which is being judgemental about people's unhip musical tastes. The book goes into detail about why the character likes certain songs and he adores making mix tapes. Songbook is an annotated mix tape of Hornby's fave songs - and even includes a CD of the songs discussed, which is good bc I don't know any of them. I keep passing signs for the new Broadway production of High Fidelity; I'm trying to remember if I read comments from Teachout or independently decided that it's a terrible idea, bc half of makes the book (and I assume the movie) so wonderful is the songs, whereas you'd have to license them and then it would be Nick Hornby's mix tape on Broadway, which seems less amusing, and would almost immediately be a period piece. Oh well, it's not my money.
Is there anything that man can't do? I finally gave up on Fever Pitch, the movie with Drew Barrymore, but then I found out that it was a remake of a movie with Colin Firth. why didn't anyone tell me this?!?! I've watched the opening credits so far, but it looks good :) Moreover, why didn't anyone tell me about his website?!?! Apparently Penguin UK has a great website for Hornby, with excerpts and additional features from his books, including a story about taking Colin Firth to an Arsenal game. I wanna watch Arsenal play Tottenham with Firth and Hornby!!! (and Bill Simmons, just to keep the cheering fair)
Anyhow, like I said, music, sport, books... one could say that I'm done with The Polysyllabic Spree, except that when I was two pages away from the end, I had to start over from the beginning, skimming the good bits and looking for books I particularly need to read. He has completely different tastes in books than I, but the way he writes makes me want to read them. His May '04 column (excerpt) about reading David Copperfield is fantastic. If you like Dickens, you owe it to yourself to read that column, if not the book. (Yes, I'm looking at you, meep.) I'm so glad I have a whole 'nuther book of reviews by him to read.
In other news... never let it be said I don't listen to suggestions from the LJ braintrust. With much kicking and screaming, I finally read the first book of the Empire of Man series by Weber and Ringo. When I was a kid, at some point all my toys got tossed into a large bin, such that some went missing and they were all jumbled together. I still remember the Christmas when I got that little farm, but after the great mixing, things on the farm were much more fun. I used to pretend that the farm was in an isolated place and the people of the farm had to find ways of growing food and foraging (in the great bin) for tools to improve their lives and of course fight off invaders. There was often a rival farm that wasn't doing so well but had less morals. In retrospect, my affinity for science fiction stories about stranded adventurers isn't so surprising, hm? Anyhow, this is me admitting I should've picked these books up months ago.