Some months ago, my friend Grant and I were chatting via Yahoo Instant Messenger when he alerted me to the fact that he had heard of a book that seemed to be perfect for me. Surprisingly, it wasn't How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Instead it was the memoir Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield.
Written by a music critic, the book reads like the best Nick Hornby novel that he never wrote as Sheffield details his transition from an awkward youth into an adulthood through his relationship with his wife Renee, with each chaper opening with, what else, a song list of a mixtape during different periods of their life together.
If that sounds too cutesy for words, it sort of is. But what keeps the proceedings from being completely sugary sweet is the sad undercurrent that goes underneath it. After eight years of marriage, Renee suddenly collapsed in the kitchen of their house and died of a pulminary embolism. Her death leaves Sheffield understandbly devastated and taints some of his favorite songs because of their association with his wife during happier moments.
The book, at his core, is about love and music, particularly how when two music geeks get together, those two things often times intersect to form the tightest of bonds.
Reading a book like this, given what we do here at the Mixtape, was a curious experience since so often we examine the outer world instead of our internal world of emotions. I mean, blathering about our daily troubles and foibles is cringe-inducing don't you think? We still shudder at the things we used to post on our Livejournal with just unbridled, angsty abandon because we have feelings and we wanted the world to know how much we felt those feeeeeeeelings. *SHAKE MY HEAD*
