"High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby

This is an amazing book. Any guy living in the present day will find something thought-provicing in this book. I won't say that women won't enjoy this book, it definitely has something for everyone, but "High Fildelity" is more of an approach to adult relationships and themes from a male perspective.

It has a modern male protagonist, Rob, who's thirty-something and has no idea what he's doing with his life. He narrates the story and frequently interjects his fantasy sequences into the story telling. Often what he, or another character, says is at odds to his personal thoughts and/or feelings, and he narrates the story as such. This makes the book quite an amusing read.

Also, Rob owns and runs a music store. He is completely ingrossed in the world of music and doesn't seem to undrestand why his record collection and mounds of music related trivia seem useless to everyone he knows. His employees, Dick and Barry, are the only people he feels comfortable ever around (and even then not that comfortable) merely because they share his passion for the world of music. The three of them seems to survive (just barely) by making all-time top five favorite lists on every possible subject.

As well, Rob has issues with women. It's not that he can't even get a date (in fact he does quite fell for himself) but it's just that he can't seem to figure women out. This is the protagonist's primary motivation as he surveys the women populating his all-tiem top five worst break-ups list.

Obviously, I emphathise with Rob through-out the entire book. I too have a (sometimes unhealthy) obsession that most others don't relate to. I frequently fantasize about nonsense. Often I find myself at odds with, and at a loss to understanding, the world I live in. This only makes the book that much better of a read.

Reading this book was an amazing, surealistic experience.

The book's author, Nick Hornby, is British, and as such the plot takes palce in London and the characters in the novel use a lot of British slang. (He also wrote the books "About A Boy" and "Fever Pitch". The fact that a bunch of his stories kept getting made into movies, is what interested me in him in the first place.)

The movie based on this book is easily one of my favorite movies - usually not on my all-time top five list, but consistently in my top ten. I've seen the movie about a dozen times, I know the story very well, and I frequently quote dialouge from it. It has an amazing cast: John Cusack plays Rob, Jack Black plays Barry, and Tim Robbins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Lisa Bonet all co-star.

Having now read the book, I can say that the is an extremely true adaptation: very little was changed at all. Obviously there are differences between the book and the movie, but most of these are due to an americanization of the story. (The events are tweaked here and there a bit, but mainly in minor ways that aren't intrical to the plot.) For the most part, though, the two are identical. Even the dialouge from the book is, for the most part, unchanged when it appears in the movie - again with minor, Americanized alterations: "bullshit" becomes "bollocks", and Rob talks about "sixth form" instead of "grade twelve".

So, reading this book was, for me, very much like re-living a favorite part of my life, but with a British twist. This is something I found very comforting.