High Fidelity

By: Nick Hornby

Narrated by: David Cale

Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's Summary

Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store in London. 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 clerks at his store who endlessly review their top five films ( Reservoir Dogs...), top five Elvis Costello songs ( Alison...), and top five episodes of Cheers (the one where Woody sang his stupid song to Kelly...). Rob tries dating a singer whose rendition of "Baby, I Love Your Way" makes him cry. But maybe its 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 (awful as it sounds) that a life as an episode of thirtysomething, with all the kids and marriages and barbecues and k.d. lang CDs that this implies, might not be so bad.

©1995 Nick Hornby (P)1998 Putnam Berkley Audio

Critic Reviews

"Told in an engaging first-person voice that blends sarcasm with self-deprecating humor, High Fidelity presents a painfully funny take on love, music, and growing up." (Library Journal)
"Hornby's amazingly accomplished debut should definitely appeal to music fans (and snobs), but it's his literate, painfully honest riffs on romantic humiliation and heartbreak that make the book so special. A rare, touching glimpse of the masculine view of affairs of the heart." (Booklist)

This is only about half the novel

I am a Nick Hornby fan. I love this novel. unfortunately this audio book only contains about half the book.
I used a free credit to download it so I discrimination loses any money or anything but had I spent money on it I would have been mad.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

movie is better than this as its abridged.

This is a little over three hours, very little changes from the movie which I love, but Jack Blacks performance really brings the Barry character to life.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

A G

Although I read this title in print, I absolutely loved it. Nick Hornby is one of the best contemporary authors out there and high fidelity is what launched his career. Great book!

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

What They Said...

I loved this BOOK in it’s entirety. The whole book and story is a five star story. I have read the book and was ready to revisit it. Why is there only an abridged version? Why, if you are going to abridge it would you take out so much of what made the character what he was? Weird things dropped in with no context! This was my first go at an abridged book, so maybe that is how it works.
The narrator should NOT try other accents or voices. And, if he is going to do them, do them all and do them well or do none. Why do one female Southern American accent and not do any other female voices for example? He uses several male voices and accents.
I think he recorded this book once and didn’t like it and recorded it again over the same file. You hear his own voice echo his words often. Other times he sounds like he is reading in the car.
I read all of these reviews before I downloaded the book and thought to myself, “Self, many books and movies that have received bad reviews turned out being good, just go for it!”
But... “What they said, really.”

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Reader's voice and abridged version bummed me out.

Somehow missed that this was an abridged version. Can't find an unabridged copy. Sad. Sad.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Why abridged?

Why on gods green earth would you abridge a book? totally senseless thing to do....the remaining part was good. love hornby.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Men are morons

Like many people, I suspect, I came across this book after seeing the Americanized hollywood movie version first. The two are very different. As one would expect. But I think the screenwriter of the movie version did a much better job of making the main character, Rob seem likable. You can forgive his idiotic approach to relationships because in the movie he's also a record-collection-cataloging-obsessed, top-five-list-making nerd played by the highly likable John Cusak. In the book, he's just a moron. Immature. Sex-centric. Self-absorbed. The book and the movie, however, suffer from the same fatal flaw: they put the characters through a set of circumstances that are highly unlikely, given human behavior. I recall in both viewing and reading, stopping myself and saying, "that character would never do that!" Rob and his girlfriend, Laura both seem to make choices for the sake of the story line instead of choices that they would make in real life scenarios. That said, Hornby is such a good story teller that it's hard to fault this book for entertainment value and readability. It's like eating popcorn. Very little nutritional value, but rather tasty.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Book is good but audio and narrator awful

Any additional comments?

The narration on this book is horrible! The guy is hard to understand and the accents he uses are atrocious. Also there is this background noise while listening... It sounds like the narrator is in a room with 5 other people also narrating a book at the same time. Poor quality audio, I'm very disappointed.

If you want to read this book I suggest doing it, just don't buy this audio version.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

Terrible narrator

The narrator should never be allowed to do American accents. In fact, he wasn't able to differentiate the English characters very well either.

The book is fine, but skip the audiobook on this one. The bad narrator spoils it.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

Voices

I did not like the voices for the other characters, especially the voices for the women!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful