high fidelity

'The other people I like are the ones who are being driven to find a tune that has been troubling them, distracting them, a tune that they can hear in their breath when they run for a bus, or in the rhythm of their windscreen wipers when they're driving home from work. Sometimes something banal and obvious is responsible for the distraction: they have heard it on the radio, or at a club. But sometimes it has come to them as if by magic. Sometimes it has come to them because the sun was out, and they saw someone who looked nice, and they suddenly found themselves humming a snatch of a song they haven't heard for fifteen or twenty years; once, a guy came in because he had dreamed a record, the whole thing, melody, title and artist. And when I found it for him (it was an old reggae thing, "Happy Go Lucky Girl" by the Paragons), and it was more or less exactly as it had appeared to him in his sleep, the look on his face made me feel as though I was not a man who ran a record shop, but a midwife, or a painter, someone whose life is routinely transcendental.'

- Nick Hornby

High Fidelity

(Page 83)

First book of The Book Challenge: completed

And thoroughly enjoyed.

I pretty much knew that's how it would go down as the film's been a firm favourite for years and i can't think of a book my sister's asked me to read that i haven't enjoyed.

I'm almost completely sure she can't say the same.

Even i'll admit some of the stuff i read is pure trash.

Hi there, Mortal Instruments.

Good day to you, Sabriel.

How's it hanging, Scar Night?

So, i can't really blame her.

The love of trashy fantastical literature is something you either have or you don't.

You cannot learn to love this stuff.

And you cannot force it on the unwilling.

Like teen slasher movies.

Especially the really bad ones.

You either bask in their tragic glory or look askance and mildly pityingly at the person watching them with a look of pure glee on their faces.

I can't explain it.

You're either a sucker for badly acted, poorly written nonsense or you've got more refined taste.

Or, like myself, you dabble in both with an equal measure of gratification.

One of my qualities that seems to flummox my siblings.

But why can't i enjoy Critters as much as i enjoy Northfork?

What's so unreasonable about that?!