Great book about some guys who work in a London record store. This is the embarrassing bit - I read it ages ago and can't remember much about it, other than that I did enjoy it and went on to read some more Nick Hornby books. The book is better than the film.

This book will be in the wild any day now. I'm a charity bookseller and I've got a potential buyer so its all packed up and ready to go....watch this space.....

This book was dispatched to a fellow book crosser in Holland a few days ago.

Sorry that it took me so long to register the book! Completely forgot about it. My husband read it this summer and liked it, I started reading but couldn't get into the story. It seemed like the male equivalent of chicklit. I'm not going to wait for a moment when I feel like reading something like this. I'll let the book go to find itself a more grateful reader.

I could not remember by whom or where I have been given this book. It has been on my MTBR for áges. Started reading yesterday, and then it hit me: this is a bookcrossing book! Oops...
I will get back when I have finished reading, which should be in about a week or so.
Fenna.

Rob is 35 years old and the owner of a rather shitty recordshop, as shitty as his collegues Barry and Dick. At the start of the book Rob has been dumped by his girlfriend, Laura. The rest of the book is all about Laura and Robs earlier girlfriends. It kind of reminded me of Bridget Jones, although Bridget is rather preoccupied with boyfriends as a means to get married whereas Rob is more the commital-fear type. In that way both books are rather stereotypical.

I actually enjoyed reading the book, especially the start. The middle part is rather dull and the end (surprisingly) ok again.

Some quotes:
Rob makes a list of the five worst breakups of his life:
"I reckon you'd sneak into the top ten, but there's no place for you in the top five; those places are reserved for the kind of humiliations and heartbreaks that you're just not capable of delivering."

"You can see this everywhere you go: young middle-class people whose lives are beginning to disappoint them, making too much noise in restaurants and clubs and wine bars. 'Look at me! I'm not as boring as you think I am! I know how to have fun!'"

Rob has a very difficult relationship with his mother:
"It would have been better for both of us if I had moved to Australia when I was fifteen, phoned home once a week and reported a sequence of fictitious major thiumphs. Most fifteen-year-olds would find it tough, living on their own (...), but nog mee. It would have been a piece of piss compared to listening to this stuff week after week."

When Laura has a new boyfriend, Rob is extremely jealous of him and constantly asks himself whether this Ian is any good in bed:
"knowing that a successor is better in bed is impossible to take"

However, Rob very swiftly gets back onto the market as well:
"I get up to go to the loo, she says she'll show me, we bump into each other, I grab, we kiss, and I'm back in the land of sexual neurosis."

"I've arrived during the part where wine tasting becomes wine drinking and, though every now and agin I spot someone swilling the wine around in their mouth and talking bollocks, mostly the're just pouring the stuff down their necks as fast as they can."

Rob: 'What do you want me to do about it?'
Laura: 'I don't want you to do anything about it. I just want you to see that I'm not entirely defined by my relationship with you (...)'
Rob: 'Why couldn't you have just come out with it in the first place? How am I supposed to guess? What's the big secret?'

"But the Dusty Springfield look of love? Forget it. As mythical as the exotic underwear."

"I have been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains."

Fenna gave High Fidelity to me because I seem to be more active as bookcrosser ;)

I saw the movie (John Cusack playing the main part) and really liked it. I was a teenager in the eighties so I am used to hitparades, top 40, and other sorts of lists. Afterwards we kept talking for hours about that :) Also about where we want to be in x years time...

I don't feel the need to read the book. So I will release it in an appropriate spot (I have an idea already).

The title immediately reminds me of the hit High Fidelity, that came from the movie Fame. Here's my list of five best songs from Fame:

1. Fame
2. Starmaker
3. Desdemona
4. I still believe in me
5. Life is a celebration

And my favourite music films from that era:

1. Grease
2. Fame (tv series!)
3. Footloose
4. Flashdance
5. Staying alive

Bij de dvd's, onder de 'H' natuurlijk. :) Ga de film zien als je de kans krijgt!

Ik hoop dat je plezier zult hebben van dit boek. Stuur je het weer op reis? En als je het echt graag wilt houden... ook goed! :) Maar laat je me dat dan wel even weten?