I read Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" for the first time last week. Finished the book in 1.5 days. The book is a lot of fun to read and no, I have not seen the John Cusack film. I know I'm 15 years late (the book was a hit when it was released in 1995) but for some reason I've never felt the need to read it before. In some ways, the book is a perfect manifesto for guys (like yours truly) who are hitting their mid-life crisis period before having a chance (or demonstrating any desire) to actually grow up and join the rest of the adult world.
The book can also be read as a quest story. No, it does not involve dragons, evil sorcerors or hobbits. It's more a chronicle of a music-geek's quest through his past that is strewn with the "corpses" of failed romances (if you can even call them that). The greatest joy of the book is the self-deprecating comedy throughout. Granted, geeks do not have the highest self-esteem - maybe that's why they build their entire sense of self around their pet peeves (e.g. comics, films, music, video games, etc.). Nor do they have the greatest luck with the opposite sex - as evidenced in the life of the protagonist, Rob Fleming, in this book. In fact, Kevin Smith built a career making films about characters just like Rob Fleming.
Read this book and laugh. Read this book and be ashamed. Read this book like a mirror showing you the "warts and all" face of the geek. Read this book and repent of your geeky judgmentalism - i.e. judging people for what they like rather than what they are like. Read this book and cover your head with ashes over your sins towards the female species of the planet. Thank you, Nick Hornby, for daring to be a geek and writing a manifesto for under-achieving geeks worldwide.
