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Nick Hornby has a heart for -ahem- losers. An old record shop owner, a former TV guy who screwed up and wanted to top himself, a guy who lived off of his dad's once too many song royalty and did pretty much nothing else, those kind of guys. You can see Hugh Grant right away :D

Juliet, Naked started with a musical pilgrimage of a couple, Duncan and Annie. Duncan was a huge fan, no, a devotee, wait there's a grander and more specific term for that, a Crowologist. That is an expert of Tucker Crowe, a late-seventies-early-eighties rock star. Apart from his short but brilliant career, what actually made Crowe a legend was an abrupt halt of the said career and even public appearance altogether after a mysterious incident in a bar's restroom. And Duncan wouldn't dare call himself a Crowologist if he just happen to own all six official albums and thirty seven concert bootleg tapes (only a tape from a Swedish concert was missing because nobody cared enough to make a record, can you believe that?). He also owned a website dedicated to the musical journey and enigma of Tucker Crowe, wrote tons of essays and books-to-be, not to mention dedicated tremendous amount of time trying to decipher Crowe's brilliant lyrics and their significance to modern life.

I'm not the kind of person who takes music seriously. At least not so for about fourteen years and according to Chris Brookmyre I'm 'two testicles short for that' anyway. Most of the time, the reasons I like a particular band or singer or song are trivial, shallow and irrelevant. But as much as I'm amazed that people like Duncan do exist, I still have an inexplicable arrogance for the music that I listen. That is what iTunes-YM-sync is for, right?

And oh, by the way, Nick Hornby's lovable loser in this book was not Duncan. This post isn't really about the book, or indeed about anything at all. I haven't even finished the book, so I'm going back to it with High Fidelity soundtrack playing on iTunes (synced to my YM status of course).

PS: The picture also doesn't have anything to do with the book. I just find it very funny, don't you think?