Songbook [Hardcover]

Nick Hornby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2002

McSweeney's is excited to release Songbook \226 a brand-new collection of short, personal essays by Nick Hornby on 31 of his favorite songs and songwriters. This hardcover book has 4-color illustrations by Marcel Dzama throughout and comes complete with a CD featuring 11 songs discussed within.

Proceeds from Songbook will benefit TreeHouse and 826 Valencia.

The TreeHouse Trust is a U.K. charity based in central London, established in 1997 to provide an educational Centre of Excellence for children with autism and related communication disorders.

826 Valencia is a nonprofit learning center in the Mission District of San Francisco, providing free writing-based tutoring and workshops for students throughout the Bay Area. Students can drop in for individual one-on-one tutoring, register for workshops, or attend field trips through local schools and community organizations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The personal essays in Nick Hornby's Songbook pop off the page with the immediacy and passion of an artfully arranged mix-tape. But then, who better to riff on 31 of his favorite songs than the author of that literary music-lover's delight, High Fidelity?

"And mostly 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," writes Hornby. More than his humble disclaimer, he captures "the narcotic need" for repeat plays of Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird," and testifies that "you can hear God" in Rufus Wainwright's coy reinterpretation of his father Loudon's "One Man Guy" ("given a neat little twist by Wainwright Junior's sexual orientation..."). Especially poignant is his reaction to "A Minor Incident," a Badly Drawn Boy song written for the soundtrack of the film version of Hornby's book About a Boy. While Hornby was writing the book, his young son was diagnosed with autism--a fact that adds greater resonance to the seemingly unrelated song he hears much later: "I write a book that isn't about my kid, and then someone writes a beautiful song based on an episode in my book that turns out to mean something much more personal to me than my book ever did." Meandering asides and observations like this linger in your mind (just like a fantastic song) long after you've flipped past the final page.

The 11-song CD that accompanies the book is a great touch, but it's too bad it doesn't contain all of the featured songs--most likely the unfortunate result of licensing difficulties. Overall, Hornby's pitch-perfect prose, the quirky illustrations from Canadian artist Marcel Dzama, and a good cause--proceeds benefit TreeHouse, a U.K. charity for children with autism, and 826 Valencia, the nonprofit Bay Area learning center--add up to make Songbook a hit. Solid gold. --Brad Thomas Parsons

Product Details

• Hardcover: 147 pages
• Publisher: Mcsweeneys Books (December 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971904774
• ISBN-13: 978-0971904774
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #691,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nick Hornby is the author of the novels A Long Way Down, How to Be Good (a New York Times bestseller), High Fidelity, and About a Boy, and of the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and editor of the short-story collection Speaking with the Angel. He is also the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award, and the Orange Word International Writers London Award 2003.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars my awesome mix tape #38, January 28, 2003

By 

Clare Quilty (a little pad in hawaii) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Songbook (Hardcover)

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.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely Book + CD + Great Writing!, January 15, 2003

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Songbook (Hardcover)

I suppose I should admit up front that I'm one of those people who would buy the phone book if Hornby wrote it. That cavaet aside, this lovely little volume with accompanying CD is the best written explanation of why people who love "pop" music do so. Hornby uses the word "pop" not only to refer to garbage of the Britney Spears/'NSYNC ilk, but as a broad distinguisher from classical, jazz, and sofroth. The 26 brief essays aren't about his favorite pop songs, nor are they about what the songs remind him of, rather these are songs that he loves (as of the time of writing) and has something to say about.

As readers of his football memoir, Fever Pitch, know, Hornby writes exceedingly well about being a fan. And more than anything, the book is about being a fan of the 3-4 minute pop tune. Of course, this neccesitates a spirited defence of pop as a genre, so throughout the book, Hornby is on the attack, railing against small-minded snobs (including his younger self) who dismiss pop music out of hand. People who've spent a good portion of their lives paying attention to pop music will find a lot of themselves in the book, and may be struck with a newfound openmindedness. And by this measure, any book that can get me to track down an old J. Geils Band album has got be considered noteworthy! (Although I remain unmoved by his essay on reconsidering Jackson Browne.)

As always, Hornby's writing is funny, poignant, telling, and dead on. His skewering of church music is priceless, as is his explanation of why "Let's Get It On" is a terrible song to have sex to, why Led Zepplin rocked his 14-year-old world, how Rod Stewart led him to Motown music, the tedium of being a music reviewer for The New Yorker, and much more. Other parts are more introspective, dwelling on how his music tastes have changed as he's gotten older, fatter, and divorced, his autistic son's love of music, and how certain musical moments have influenced his writing.

It's a brief book, but one that ranges far and wide. Although I'm not really fan of much of any of the artists he writes about, he still manages to use their work to make larger points that are relevent to any music fan. Somewhat annoyingly, he mentions my favorite band (The Clash) more often (in eight different essays) than any other throughout the book, but didn't pick one of their songs to write about! That aside, the one thing that holds the book back a little is that the CD doesn't contain all the songs in the book (no doubt due to liscensing and money issues) and so leaves the reader hunting for MP3s online. But as the book's proceeds go to charity, this is easily overlooked and forgiven. Some of the best music writing I've come across.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CD Playlist, April 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Songbook (Hardcover)

1 Paul Westerberg - Born For Me
2 Teenage Fanclub - Your Love is the Place Where I Come From
3 The Bible - Glorybound
4 Aimee Mann - I've Had It
5 Rufus Wainwright - One Man Guy
6 Rod Stewart - Mama You Been On My Mind
7 Badly Drawn Boy - A Minor Incident
8 Teenage Fanclub - Ain't That Enough
9 Ben Folds Five - Smoke
10 Mark Mulcahy - Hey Self Defeater
11 Ani DiFranco - You Had Time

The book is genuinely more engaging than his pop music criticism for The New Yorker as he is obviously writing with his heart as opposed to his head.