Book review - High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

I'm going to be frank. I love reading the book before the film generally, but it's very rarely that I do it because it's usually a film that brings the book to my attention - I am so sorry. That's how I came across this book, I really like the film, and I chose to read the book because I needed to read a funny book as part of my 2015 reading challenge so I googled 'funny books' to get some ideas and saw this there, so I thought I'd give it a go because I remembered finding the movie pretty funny. Furthermore, I felt as Valentine's Day was coming up (and this review is going up on Valentine's Day), a book about a bad breakup and the story of other breakups was just relevant.

Synopsis:

Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups? Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn't on it - even though she's just become his latest ex. He's got his life back, you see. He can do what he wants when he wants: like listen to whatever music he likes, look up the girls that are on his list, and generally behave as if Laura never mattered. But Rob finds he can't move on. He's stuck in a really deep groove - and it's called Laura. Soon, he's asking himself some big questions: about love, about life - and about why we choose to share ours with the people we do.

My thoughts:

I just want to say that this book is quite possibly my favourite book of all time, which is a sweeping statement, but that's how much I enjoyed it. I found myself constantly laughing, and I loved all of the references to music - I'm pretty certain I'm Rob, purely because he loves The Beatles (seriously like he's on my level of Beatlemaniac) and he quite likes The Smiths amongst other cool artists and groups, but he's a massive twonk - you can quite understand why Laura splits up with him, but you also sort of like him too, or at least I did but that's probably because I relate to him. Rob cares more about music than he does maintaining relationships whether they be with friends, family, or people of the romantic persuasion. I think my favourite character was Barry (who's played by Jack Black in the film and he does a brilliant job), Barry is sassy as heck and he's even less likeable than Rob but I think that's why I like him, I found myself laughing whenever Barry was mentioned. 

The storyline wasn't an epic story, it's not life changing in that sense, but it's so funny and if you're into music (y'know music history, pop music on the whole) this book will definitely be an enjoyable read. I really love Nick Hornby's writing style, it's conversational and straightforward but not in any means simplistic, just not overly complicated making it suitable for practically anyone.

I feel that because one of the recurring jokes in the book is the lists of 5, I should do a list of 5 best things about the book:
1. Barry (just Barry, no explanation needed)
2. The music references - especially the ones made to The Beatles
3. Rob's annoying behaviour (he's a loner who can't bear to be alone, it's pretty funny)
4. Hornby's comfortable writing style (I'm sorry if that's a strange way to put it, but it just is comfortable and conversational)
5. The recurring lists of 5 in the book

Overall rating:

I gave this book 5/5 stars on Goodreads, I really really enjoyed it and I'm rewatching the film as I'm writing this very review, and finding it even funnier than I did the first time now that I've read the book. As I said, I've discovered I love Hornby's writing style so I think I'm actually going to read another Hornby book very soon!

Have you read or seen High Fidelity?

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