I loved the movie, but I'm starting to think John Cusack might be why. I didn't like any of the characters in the book and I didn't feel like any of Rob's justifications for some of the things he did made him easier to understand or more likeable. However, I always like stories where people talk about the inner implications of being confronted with change so I did enjoy reading it despite the failed attempt at making a selfish man appear decent. ( )

I liked it much better than the movie because it is fuller, more fleshed-out about why things are happening and what people are feeling. The fun and silly stuff from the movie is still there, and still funny, and somehow better because of the balance with the emotional stuff. ( )

I enjoyed it especially since I had seen the film years ago. Hornsby is a good storyteller though it seemed a bit slow to me. ( )

i can't believe it took me so long to read this book. I'm obsessed with John cusack so I discovered the movie as I own all of his movies and fell in love with it instantly as it combined two of my favorite things, him and music. but even though this is one of the closest book to movie conversions I've come across, the book is laid out brilliantly. I'm not going to rave about all the bits I loved just read the damn thing because it's only 200ish pages. p.s. I still dislike Laura. ( )

Since I saw the movie before reading the book, this one held no surprises for me. The movie's an almost perfect adaptation of the book (not surprisingly, since the narration and the plot are pretty straightforward and very suitable as screenplay material).

It's very funny and any male can definitely see himself reflected in some (not all, or you'd be a bastard) of Rob's attitudes. It's insightful in its best passages, but not quite moving as Fever Pitch, the other Hornby book I read. It seems like, for as much as Nick puts of himself in the page, that High Fidelity still has a lot of the artist's pretense to show himself (or his alter-ego) as cool. You may argue that Rob isn't cool anymore, but I think his lifestyle definitely has some of that wish-fulfillment every office worker dreams about (i.e, not having a job, doing your own thing, revert to adolescence). It seems to me that Fever Pitch is much more raw and bereft of the "cool" imposture, showing more of the actual person behind the story. There's a lot of self-deprecation in High Fidelity, and it makes for its funniest moments.

As someone said, this book is like "guy-lit", that is, it ought to occupy the same place in the commercial book world as "chick-lit". Maybe it's because it deals with feelings regarding modern relationships, and it replaces shoes and accesories with records. After seeing the "quality" of chick-lit, this comparison would do a great disservice to this book, but it may help anyway to let prospective readers know what to expect, since it's not high-brow and it definitely deals with feelings and is hard to categorize as any genre in particular. The best I can do to inscribe it in a genre also serves as a good description: "A coming of age story, with the character's own selfish, adolescent self as the enemy to vanquish"
( )