Songs book Pdf Summary Reviews By Nick Hornby

Quick Navigation

Songs Book Pdf Summary

“All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don’t like them as much as I do.” —Nick Hornby, from Songbook

Songs, songwriters, and why and how they get under our skin… Songbook is Nick Hornby’s labor of love. A shrewd, funny, and completely unique collection of musings on pop music, why it’s good, what makes us listen and love it so much, and the ways in which it attaches itself to our lives—all with the beat of a perfectly mastered mix tape.

READ

Songs book Review

Clare Quilty

4.0 out of 5 stars my awesome mix tape #38
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 28, 2003

Verified Purchase

I bought this book, sight unseen, simply because of the description, which was: Nick Hornby, one of my favorite writers, had written a book about a bunch of his favorite songs. That’s all I needed to know, that sounded great to me, I was sold.
I’ve been a Hornby fan since Fever Pitch. When High Fidelity (the book) came out, I was amazed: it felt like Hornby had been eavesdropping on my mind, because I tend to agree with a lot of his opinions about music and music lovers. Similarly, I’m a big fan of the reviews he wrote for The New Yorker a few years ago.
So I ordered the book and it showed up in my box and I immediately turned to the table of contents to see: which songs did he write about??? And I was surprised, and a bit disappointed, to see that I only recognized about a dozen of the titles. And there wasn’t one song in the bunch that I considered a personal favorite. And when I listened to the songs I didn’t know (included on a handy-dandy CD)… they didn’t blow me away. But that’s the beauty of a mix tape and, despite the fact that it’s printed on paper, this is a mix tape.
And this one comes with great liner notes. Hornby’s a smart, entertaining, intuitive writer. I may sound like a disappointed fan trying to make the best of a book that didn’t satisfy me 100%, but even when Hornby’s writing about music I haven’t heard, it’s still enjoyable, it’s still worthwhile, it’s still exposing me to things I previously didn’t know about.
Even when he’s confessing to not being a huge Dylan fan and confesses to preferring a Rod Stewart cover of one of my favorite Dylan songs to the original (which is, of course, the true road to enternal damnation), he does so in a way that’s completely relatable even to a Dylan fanatic.
Even when he’s extolling the virtues of a song I find to be “sad bastard” music (like he does in his essay about Mark Mulcahy’s “Hey Self Defeater”) he manages to include a great, conversational subtext about the virtues of small, privately owned, slowly-becomming-extinct record stores with a personal touch.
This is also a beautifully designed McSweeny book, with a beautiful “Maxell XL-II” mix-tape cover and with clever illustrations by Marcel Dzama. The book also benefits Treehouse Trust and 826 Valencia, organizations that are extremely worthy of the extra money.
Hornby should do one of these a year, I think. And next time, it’d be nice if he’d touch on his favorite Stones songs, his favorite Stax songs, his favorite Steve Earle songs, his favorite blues, his favorite jazz, his favorite Clash songs, etc, etc. If he’ll write it, I’ll read it.

Jersey KidTop Contributor: Firefly (TV Show)

4.0 out of 5 stars Life with a backbeat
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 6, 2003

Verified Purchase

I used to work for a rather small company that suffered from pretensions of greatness. The company had attempted to develop a new software package that – had development gone smoothly – would have allowed it to gain a massive share of one of those esoteric niches that are the stars in the software galaxy.
Instead, the project foundered and the company almost went bankrupt. At a shareholders’ meeting (the company had 50 people; that we held shareholders’ meeting showed the pretension), I asked the Presdient, what he was doing to prevent the problem from recurring. His response: “What would you do?”
My response began with “Hey, I ain’t no hero, that’s understood…”
What does one do when the cliche ‘The Soundtrack of Our Lives” applies?
You become Nick Hornby. And, you write a marvelous treatise on just how and why (and, above all, how much) you love what I am afraid has no better name than ‘Pop Music”.
Mr. Hornby has always been an introspective character worthy of inclusion in his own novels, “About a Boy”, and “High Fidelity”. In fact, that came to pass in his autobiographical “Fever Pitch”. But, where Arsenal (Go Gunners!) was the cloth on which the tapestry of his life (loss of father, doubts about himself, selfishness, and other varied and sundry passions) was sewn, here, it is thrity one songs that serve that purpose.
But, please be aware this is not an anthology of music reviews. This is an anthology of Mr. Hornby’s life. You’ll understand if you are one of us, those people who carry a jukebox in their head…no, in their soul. He shares his soul with us, using an intimacy that is normally saved for confessions to the closest of friends. It’s akin to sitting in the back of your local over that one last pint, when the alcohol has freed you from the demons of self-consciousness. It’s in that state that you will speak the truth about yourself and what you feel. That Mr. Hornby does it with background music makes it all the more perfect.
Buy this book. Read this book. Live this book. Savor the moods, the feelings, the emotions, the wins and losses, the very life of being alive.

Ms_Jade_Li

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for people who really love their music.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 5, 2019

Verified Purchase

Nick Hornby has compiled a list of 31 or so songs that have impacted him in different ways, or the songs represent different aspects of music appreciation that Nick wants to share. He also has chapters at the end that cover albums, as well as one on boxed sets, and one on contemporary “pop” (as the book was written in 2003, it would be contemporary for 2003.) Nick’s long-term love affair with music is apparent as he is intimate with every nuance of it through the chapters. Those who have similar love affairs with music will delight in his essays. Nick also has a very wry sense of humor that had me laughing out loud several times while reading.

I had considered blogging one of Nick’s favorites each day for a month here and giving Nick’s reasons why he chose it, but then I thought if a list will be made and shared, with the reasons why, it will be my own choices and reasons.

This book is also a primer on music education. As he expounds on the intricacies of why he chose, or did not choose, a particular song, it gives me pause to reflect on aspects not considered before — which is making me a “better” appreciator of music.

My biggest takeaway from Songbook is that each music lover out there has one of these lists, even if it’s only in their heads and the reasons why not articulated. Nick is a genius for deciding to put his down on paper.

I want to thank Hans at Word Press’ hanspostcard for making me aware of, “Songbook.” I also want to thank him for his most excellent blog that presents albums and songs daily, with commentary, that is helping me fill in the blanks in my music education. It is, for all intents and purposes, Hans’ living songbook. THANK YOU HANS.

About Nick Hornby Author Of Songs book pdf Book

Nick Hornby is the author of the novels Songs book pdf Book, A Long Way Down, Slam, How to Be Good, High Fidelity, and About a Boy, and the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Shakespeare Wrote for Money, and The Polysyllabic Spree, as well as the editor of the short-story collection Speaking with the Angel. He is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ E. M. Forster Award and the winner of the 2003 Orange Word International Writers’ London Award. Among his many other honors and awards, four of his titles have been named New York Times Notable Books. A film written by Hornby, An Education – shown at the Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim – was the lead movie at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival and distributed by Sony that fall. That same September, the author published his latest novel, Juliet, Naked to wide acclaim. Hornby lives in North London.