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I wavered between giving this book three or four stars, but decided on three because of several essays in the middle that I didn't find particularly interesting and could have done without. In general, these essays provide an insightful look at music in general, how it plays a part in our lives and its impact on culture.

Because the essays are written by Nick Hornby, they are often quite funny, and almost always well-crafted. I love his general lack of pretension about his music tastes, and that he recognizes he's a middle-aged white man who probably isn't always the best judge of modern music (and he's okay with that).

I have not heard many of the songs he wrote about, but that didn't matter. The songs themselves were often only periphery to the main points he was trying to make about culture or music tastes or the importance of music in our lives. I thought the first few essays started off strong, and then the book started to lag in the middle, but overall I enjoyed it.

My edition also came with five extra essays reprinted from The New Yorker, but most of them were album reviews and didn't feel like they fit with the rest of the book. Still, even album reviews are quite insightful in the hands of Hornsby. And the fifth of these essays, where Hornby decides to listen to the 10 best-selling albums in the U.S. based on the Billboard charts, contains one of the best and funniest insults I've heard of a band's lyrics (but I'll let you read for yourself).