High Fidelity again

So, reading the book has been an interesting and mostly fulfilling experience.  I LOVED the movie a lot in my late teenage years, and the book has proven even better.  Tough going at first because the parallels were almost TOO close, but as the book's progressed the fact that is actually is a book stands out.  While the movie has its fair share of internal monologue, the book has more and Nick Hornby's talent at writing it really stands out.  I'm always seeking to find something to identify with whatever I happen to be doing, music, movies, conversations, sports, etc.  It's a big part of keeping me centered, and why I tend not to hold grudges.  This book hits a bit too close to home at times, but mostly in a good way.  Here's one of my favorite passages:

"It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can't afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product.  You've got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you've got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you're compelled to start all over again.  Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content:  we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.  Maybe Al Green is directly responsible for more than I ever realized."

The bit about music making it hard to keep a good relationship seems a bit overblown, but coming from the character that's fair enough.  I like the sentiment behind it though - you listen to angry music when you're angry, love songs when you've got those butterflies in your stomach, pop in a good mood, etc.  Everyone has different tastes, but at the same time everyone also has different tastes for different moods.  It's weird how you might be in a bad mood, and one song might pull you out of it while another might push you to tears, but that doesn't necessarily mean that one was the right or wrong choice.  Even though being pulled deeper into that mood might SEEM bad, sometimes it's that push that leads to working things out in your own head.  It might be this same reason that I tend to connect a bit better with people with similar musical tastes - if you're listening to the same things, you're probably FEELING the same things.  Then again, that might be reading too much, since one person might like a song's guitar work or beat while another identifies with the lyrics.

Feel like I'm rambling a bit.  Short story for the rest of the book:  his general mopey attitude starts to wear on you a bit over 300+ pages, but as mentioned Hornsby does a great job on internal monologue.  All those wandering thoughts, connections, little doubts and scenarios we create for ourselves, he writes those in an unbelievably real fashion.  It's kind of neat to feel sane with them.

Also, the bit with the "I bet I can sell 5 copies of the Beta Band's Three EPs" isn't in the book.  Kind of a shame because I love that album and found it through the movie, but at the same time it wouldn't really work without the song.  Dry the Rain is fantastic.

I feel like I should be writing top 5 music lists.

Finally, there's a bit in which Rob is catching up with one of his exes (Charlie), and she and her friends are theorizing on what they would name their dogs if they had them.  I was amused.