Nick Hornby's _Songbook_

I'm really, really curious to have someone else buy it and tell me what they think.

It does look lovingly packaged. Nice gift idea. But when I was X-Mas shopping today I passed it over for the Dave Eggers-edited Best Non-Required Reading anthology ... oh, and they just reprinted the first three volumes of McSweeney's, $42 ...

So no one has seen this, then?

No disrespect intended to posters, but... joke thread, right?

No joke, PF. I'm not the biggest Hornby fan, but I thought he might have something intersting to say about records he likes (he has little to say about stuff that doesn't interest him, I know that.) I'm casting a line here, to see if anyone has looked at it.

Plus, I love the idea of a book that's like "Here are essays about 12 songs I like...oh, and then here's a CD with those 12 songs on it." Every music writer wants to publish one of those, don't they?

yeah the idea of the book is great,i'd love if it was someone other than hornby (who i don't hate as much as other people seem to,but still)
there are loads of writers who i'd love to do a book like this....

Mark: I like the idea when you put it like that. But I hate Hornby, so I don't like the idea as it actually exists.

Sinker to thread, surely...

I like Hornby, but I don't care that much for reading.

its not often i agree with pinefox...but, this is a joke thread right? ;)

No, this is a joke:

What did the rooster cross the basketball court?

He heard the referee was blowing fowls.

he's entitled i guess, if they let him: i'd rather read and talk abt pinefox

this is obv a spur for me to get on with my long-term "the church of me: the hymn book" plan (provided i get anywhere with my "feminisation of noise" book first!).

I actually wrote a lot for my proposed book but lots of it is crap.

I read this book & I liked it.

Hornby should not be a pop music critic (he's much too closed-minded) but I enjoyed reading personal essays by him about music & his life. He's gotten old & turned into a pussy, you could say (he no longer likes Suicide, etc.), but I think he explains pretty well how his tastes have changed as he ages. I've had the opposite experience so far (listen to more "extreme" stuff now than I did in my early 20s) but I'm still interested in his take.

In a way, his stuff in this book reminds me of the tone on some of the more personal essays I've seen run in Freaky Trigger; Hornby's not trying to convince anybody of anything (he better not be!), but I think this book works in the same way you might sit with a friend, have a drink, & discuss some records.

Why is being close-minded a bad thing for a critic?

I'm going to buy this book because I like the way he writes, and I like the McSwys Books look and feel, and I like books that come with cds, and because I no longer like Suicide either (does this make me a pussy?).

If the book inspires more people to get a few megs of webspace and do the same, good for NH.

yeah i kind of think if nick hornby had never been published,and found ilx/ft and started writing articles about the music he likes and why he likes them,he'd be welcomed as someone who loves music and is enthusiastic about it...
i am fairly cynical about him as well,but i reckon it is more because of what he has come to represent,if he wasn't most people's image of a music fan and was just another guy we'd probably all love him and eagerly await his next freaky trigger article about the similarities between martin keown and charles mingus...

also,ronan,what was your proposed book?
is there an ile thread about it?

I just want to do a book about my nights out and the music and bits of my life in the style of the Underworld article I did for Freaky Trigger. It's kind of all out of sync at the moment but I figure it's not bad to keep doing the odd note here and there, maybe eventually do a book in a few years. Can't really ever write how I want to for money.

could be interesting,i really liked that underworld article...
i've also vaguely thought about writing a book along those lines as well,mainly about the free party scene in dublin and that sort of carry on...
perhaps it's just a desire to justify the amount of time spent doing fuck all,(at least by the standards of society)listening to music and taking drugs,but i do think this sort of thing could be intersting,and is the sort of thing that should be documented...
the success of blogs and the spread of the ft/ilm style personal music writing (as pioneered by nick hornby (i'm only half joking)) has made me think that this could be a good idea,but it's very hard to tell how/if it would work,and if it would be possible to write a book like this without boring people with no knowledge of the music/scene being described...
i suppose the mark of being a good writer would be the ability to make something like this intersting,as a lot of people who write for ft associated sites (yourself included) do....

also,marcello,i was actually thinking today that the church of me writings should be collected and published...

Yeah I think if I could do it would be a wicked thing to just have for my friends and stuff aswell, like the people who were at the various things. Though the justifying doing fuck all part does exist yeah!

Yeah Robin this is a short-term ambition of mine (i.e. I'd like to get CoM published in book form before the end of the year). Not quite sure how to organise it all to make it publishable, though; order it like David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film, or publish it just as it is a la Walter Benjamin's Arcades? I'm working on it.

can't say i'm familiar with either of the books you mention,unfortunately...
dunno about it being in a dictionary style though,do you mean alphabetized according to subject?
i think it would be better to have it published as it appeared,chronologically...
obviously though there is a lot of very personal stuff up there,so i suppose how you want to present that will be a big factor...
i think the best way to do it would be to publish it as is,with an introduction explaining the context and circumstances in which it was written,both in terms of your personal situation and the "community" it is a part of - ie explaining the idea of a blog,who reads it,what references might be made to other writers or sites,etc...

one reason i'd like to see the church of me published,or in a more permanent form,is that even though i check the site every day,i don't always read it "cover to cover",as it were, because often i haven't heard the music being discussed,and prefer to read about something i already know...(i usually check imdb for external review after i see a film,but would rarely read a review to decide if i wanted to see a film,and this is less the case for music,but i often see some album being talked about on church of me and think,well,i want to hear that anyway,so i'll wait till i do and then go back and see what has been written about it...this is not always the case,but happens a lot of the time)

when you say you hope to get it published by the end of the year,have you had any contact with publishers?
i presume your writing on the internet was noticed by people at the wire and uncut,so have people been in touch with you about the possibility of a book or are you just going to organise it and then send it off?
(apologies if the above demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the way the publishing industry works...)