
High Fidelity
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Narrated by:
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David Case
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By:
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Nick Hornby
Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award
New York Times Notable Book
Now a Hulu TV series starring Zoë Kravitz!
"I've always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It's funny and heartbreaking all at the same time."—Zoë Kravitz
From the bestselling author of About a Boy, A Long Way Down and Dickens and Prince, a wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll.
Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? Rob seeks refuge in the company of the offbeat clerks at his store, who endlessly review their top five films; top five Elvis Costello songs; top five episodes of Cheers.
Rob tries dating a singer, but maybe it’s just that he’s always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. Then he sees Laura again. And Rob begins to think that life with kids, marriage, barbecues, and soft rock CDs might not be so bad.
©1995 Nick Hornby (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"As funny, compulsive and contemporary a first novel as you could wish for."—GQ
"One of the top ten books of the year."—Entertainment Weekly
"It is rare that a book so hilarious is also so sharp about sex and manliness, memory and music."—The New Yorker
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fantastic!
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Sometimes the great are hard to articulate.
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That being said, the writing is great, there’s some really funny and actually poignant stuff in here. If the audio book wasn’t recorded in a tin can, I may have been able to enjoy it just a bit more.
Funny lines, main character is unlikable, AWFUL recording quality
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Yes, there is a movie and yes there is a show and both of them are great in their own right, but this book is fantastic.
The performance captures the wit and English charm well, my only complaint is the habit of making the women’s voices a bit higher and lighter than is necessary- which can be a bit distracting.
Otherwise, this book absolutely is one of my top five, all time, favorite desert island reads.
Great Book. Gets Better With Age. Like Most Of Us...Hopefully.
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Hipster Manic Pixie Dream Boy
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Should have done it before, but I really connected with it at this moment of my life.
I truly enjoyed it, and the ending was fantastic.
Fenomenal work by the reader, takes it to a new level!
Made me laugh and think and remember
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movie was better
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My first Hornby book.
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Brilliant Story and Narration
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I love High Fidelity. Read the book, saw the movie, watched the Hulu reboot, loved them all. An unabridged audio edition was not available on Audible until recently, finally got a chance to listen to it, and -- not at all what I hoped for. There's nothing wrong with the book, still one of my favorites, although it does feel dated -- not just because so much of today's technology is absent, but the passage of time has not been kind to Hornby's pop culture references (there isn't even a mention of Ben Folds, who became a big part of Hornby's musical canon but hadn't yet recorded when High Fidelity was written).
No, the real problem is the narration. Whose idea was it to hire a 60-70-year old guy with a whiny voice to read a story about a 30-year-old guy obsessed with pop culture and women? As accomplished a narrator as David Case was, the acclaim was for his traditional reading of classic works of English literature. He was absolutely the wrong choice for this book, the result being that our protagonist comes off as snotty, spoiled, unlikeable -- not at all like the loveable shaggy dog portrayed by John Cusack.
I almost never pan a book entirely because of its narrator. I can usually grow accustomed to even the worst of them, or at least work through them and focus on other elements of the writing. But this is a rare case where the narration literally alters the character for the worse, making the whole affair irredeemably unlikeable. I have to just put this behind me, maybe watch the movie again to straighten me out.
Not a Top Five Listen
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