Thursday, February 15, 2018

Reading Journal:


Nick Hornby
Riverhead Books, 1995
323 pages

Yesterday one of my students told me he is binge-watching Dynasty.  Wait, WHAT???? Isn’t that 80’s decadent glamour soap?  Yeah, he says, it’s a remake.  I just read an article in something about how there are so many remakes of 80’s and 90‘s TV shows; One Day at a time- with an updated Latina cast,  Fuller House- older same cast without the twins, Will and Grace, older and still gay, but less taboo of being gay.  This is happening because the people who grew-up watching these shows are now the producers and executives of television, and thus the nostalgia of their youth are being relived for the next generation.  But really, Dynasty? 

So in the same nostalgic vein, I re-read another book from my past:  Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Then continuing on my nostalgic track, I re-watched the movie with the same title, starring John Cusack and Jack Black.  This is the equivalent of chick-lit for dudes, dude-lit.  Making top five lists, angst of relationship foibles, slacker dude being unsure of his future along with his oddball friends, sleeping around, etc. 

This book, just like Catcher in the Rye, is a period piece, and seemed very sophomoric to revisit in my middle age years.  The movie however, was enjoyable to watch, (especially Jack Black in his breakout roll) even though the setting had changed from London to Chicago.

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