books: 1 down, 23 to go - a long way down

In keeping with my New Year's resolution, I have just finished reading my first book of the year which was A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, a novel about four people who happen to meet at the top of a building with the same suicidal intentions of jumping off. It was alright, I guess. Better than How to Be Good but not as good as About a Boy, and I haven't read High Fidelity so I can't really speak of that. Leave it to Nick Hornby to write a book about four suicidal people and still manage to insert plenty of musical references and somehow make it funny too. Take, for instance, this passage. The failed suicide jumpers have formed a little group therapy gang, and JJ (the frustrated, washed-up musician) decided that it would make sense to introduce the other three to the music of Nick Drake. Frustrated that they are less than receptive to Drake's melancholy, he goes on a "music rage":

I wondered whether it would be possible to punch both of them out simultaneously, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would all be over too quickly and there wouldn't be enough pain involved... It's music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows you're being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you're carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead.

I can relate. It's kind of like when I was sixteen-years-old and my best friend ridiculed me for liking Cracker when her favorite band was Brooks and Dunn. I even let her teach me how to line dance the "Boot-Scootin' Boogie" because I was trying to placate her like a good friend would do. I think it took incredible control on my part not to claw her eyes out when her no-taste ass called my musical taste "weird" and. Of course, neither one of us were trying to use music as a means of avoiding giving in to our suicidal tendancies, so maybe I call only relate a little.

So overall, I enjoyed it enough while I was reading it, but whenever I put it down I never really felt compelled to pick it back up again, you know? I'd give it 6.5 out of 10.

Up next: The Ruins, by Scott Smith