- Paperback: 296 pages
- Publisher: Till Victory Press (26 Jun 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0983502900
- ISBN-13: 978-0983502906
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.3 x 1.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 913,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Lisa Simon, age 37, still loves loud punk rock and hates Dave Matthews with an all-consuming passion. April 15, 2001 should have been just another Sunday night. But a news headline landing in Lisa's email inbox changes everything: "Joey Ramone is dead." The death of one of her teenage heroes serves as an long-overdue wake-up call causing Lisa to examine her life and how she's lived it, from her youth as a poet on the streets of the East Village to 10 years later, all grown up with a career and a fiance. Add to the mix Jake McDaniel, lead singer of million-selling, critically-regarded Seattle band Blue Electric, known better to Lisa as the starving renegades who lived next door to her when she first arrived in Seattle. In the midst of an unexpectedly heated argument with the fiance over the historical relevance (or not) of the Ramones - which forces Lisa to face the truth about her relationship - Jake writes and invites Lisa to LA. Throwing what seems like half her cd collection in the car, along with a wardrobe consisting of high heels, jeans and t-shirts, Lisa starts driving from Seattle to LA in the middle of the night, accompanied by music, memories, and the ghosts of the past. Arriving in LA, she finds refuge, but also collides with her past, present and future; decisions need to be made, and this time, Lisa stands her ground.
About the Author
Caryn Rose is a Brooklyn-based writer and photographer who documents rock-and-roll, baseball and urban life. She covers the ups and downs of the New York Mets at metsgrrl.com, reports on Bruce Springsteen for Backstreets Magazine and brucespringsteen.net, and ruminates about music at jukeboxgraduate.com. She lives in Greenpoint with her boyfriend and her cat, Jackie Wilson. B-Sides And Broken Hearts is her first novel.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Kindle Edition
B-Sides and Broken Hearts is the story of 37 year-old Lisa, who is finding it hard coming to terms with the death of Joey Ramone, one of her favourite musicians. His death forces her to think about her life and she finds that she is not happy. Her relationship with the predictable, Ian, is not the type of relationship she had envisaged for herself when she was young. The death of Joey Ramone leads to a torrent of emails from Lisa's music-loving friends, and puts her back in touch with Jake, the singer with a successful band, Blue Electric. Lisa had been there with Jake and the rest of the band right from the start when they were unknown and penniless. She watched them grow into a band that could fill arenas. However, for the past 5 years her relationship with the band has been overshadowed by the fact that her boyfriend shows little interest in getting to know them. From the outside, all of Lisa's friends have always thought she should have ended up with Jake. None of her friends like Ian. After Joey Ramone's death, when Ian fails to understand why she is so upset, Lisa makes the decision to visit her old friends in LA. She packs some belongings, mainly CDs for the journey, and drives all night to revisit her past. Lisa goes on a journey in this novel, to find the person she really is. After a tragic relationship when she was younger, she had lost her way. Will her old friends in LA help her reconnect with the real Lisa?
This book is about dreams, friends, love, relationships, and above all it is about music and how music can have a profound influence on our lives.
I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever felt that the world had ended because their favourite band split up, anyone who obsessively waited for new albums to be released by their favourite bands and spent their last pennies on gigs and records, anyone who has ever screamed the lyrics to their favourite songs while driving in their car... This is a book for dreamers, and reaffirms the importance of believing in your dreams, and following your heart.
It is well written and engaging. I found myself feeling sad when I knew that the story would soon end. The ending is poignant and uplifting at the same time. This is a must read for music lovers.
Reviewed by Maria Savva as a reviewer for Bookpleasures.
This book is about dreams, friends, love, relationships, and above all it is about music and how music can have a profound influence on our lives.
I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever felt that the world had ended because their favourite band split up, anyone who obsessively waited for new albums to be released by their favourite bands and spent their last pennies on gigs and records, anyone who has ever screamed the lyrics to their favourite songs while driving in their car... This is a book for dreamers, and reaffirms the importance of believing in your dreams, and following your heart.
It is well written and engaging. I found myself feeling sad when I knew that the story would soon end. The ending is poignant and uplifting at the same time. This is a must read for music lovers.
Reviewed by Maria Savva as a reviewer for Bookpleasures.
Format:Kindle Edition
"B-Sides and Broken Hearts" should have universal appeal for its main story line, with the protagonist, Lisa, faced with a major life decision, and forced to decide what is important to her. While the specifics may be different, the struggle is one most of us have faced.
However, for me, the most significant message is the power of music. If you're like me, there are songs that can lift you up and those that will put you into a funk, while others take you back to a specific time, place, or person. An idea epitomized midway through the book by this paragraph:
"How can this happen? How can a song that meant so much to me when I first heard it at fourteen, a song about dreams and hope, suddenly mean just as much right now, suddenly the words apply exactly to my life twenty-two years later? And how can it affect me in the same way, how can it lift me up, transport me, elevate me, inspire me, give me meaning and, well, hope?"
On her website Rose says her goal was to "write the woman's version of 'High Fidelity.'" (A book by Nick Hornby, later made into a movie starring John Cusack.) Rose said she, "wanted to read a book where a woman could like music as much as a guy and not be called a groupie or be told that she sure knew a lot about music for a girl." I think she did it. Rose knows a lot about music for anyone, regardless of gender, and this knowledge permeates the pages of "B-Sides and Broken Hearts." The music geek will love this book for that reason as it smoothly integrates mentions of songs and bands from big (The Rolling Stones) to relatively obscure (I've heard of Eddie Spaghetti and his band, The Supersuckers, have you?) If you're not a music fan, "B-Sides and Broken Hearts" is still a good story, but if you are, it is a can't miss.
**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **
However, for me, the most significant message is the power of music. If you're like me, there are songs that can lift you up and those that will put you into a funk, while others take you back to a specific time, place, or person. An idea epitomized midway through the book by this paragraph:
"How can this happen? How can a song that meant so much to me when I first heard it at fourteen, a song about dreams and hope, suddenly mean just as much right now, suddenly the words apply exactly to my life twenty-two years later? And how can it affect me in the same way, how can it lift me up, transport me, elevate me, inspire me, give me meaning and, well, hope?"
On her website Rose says her goal was to "write the woman's version of 'High Fidelity.'" (A book by Nick Hornby, later made into a movie starring John Cusack.) Rose said she, "wanted to read a book where a woman could like music as much as a guy and not be called a groupie or be told that she sure knew a lot about music for a girl." I think she did it. Rose knows a lot about music for anyone, regardless of gender, and this knowledge permeates the pages of "B-Sides and Broken Hearts." The music geek will love this book for that reason as it smoothly integrates mentions of songs and bands from big (The Rolling Stones) to relatively obscure (I've heard of Eddie Spaghetti and his band, The Supersuckers, have you?) If you're not a music fan, "B-Sides and Broken Hearts" is still a good story, but if you are, it is a can't miss.
**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **
Format:Paperback
Caryn Rose's "B-Sides and Broken Hearts" is an excellent snapshot of a world that quite possibly doesn't exist anymore. Or if it does then sadly there's all too little evidence of it doing so. In this case, familiarity does not breed contempt other than the fact that whenever these kind of obsessions are covered in print they seem to be compared to "High Fidelity".
Dunno about you but I always preferred the film which is sacrilege in some quarters. I can reason this not least because it starts out with "You're Gonna Miss Me" and MX-80 Sound's "Hard Attack" appears in the front of one of the shop racks. We know these people is what I'm trying to say.
And I know exactly when I got the news about Joey and that sets the scene for this entire thing. Luckily I was with people that did understand the enormity. Lisa Simon wasn't so lucky. Some of this is pretty moving. I'm less inclined to go along with the premise that Pearl Jam ever made a listenable record. But hell, she even includes references to The Replacements version of "Black Diamond". "B-Sides..." really is a superb haven and I wouldn't be surprised if Santa is toting a number of these for lucky girls and boys that might enjoy a stay in this particular kind of universe.
It's all about the passion that somehow seems to have gotten lost in recent times. The best book about music since JD King's as yet criminally unpublished "Like A 45 at 33".
Dunno about you but I always preferred the film which is sacrilege in some quarters. I can reason this not least because it starts out with "You're Gonna Miss Me" and MX-80 Sound's "Hard Attack" appears in the front of one of the shop racks. We know these people is what I'm trying to say.
And I know exactly when I got the news about Joey and that sets the scene for this entire thing. Luckily I was with people that did understand the enormity. Lisa Simon wasn't so lucky. Some of this is pretty moving. I'm less inclined to go along with the premise that Pearl Jam ever made a listenable record. But hell, she even includes references to The Replacements version of "Black Diamond". "B-Sides..." really is a superb haven and I wouldn't be surprised if Santa is toting a number of these for lucky girls and boys that might enjoy a stay in this particular kind of universe.
It's all about the passion that somehow seems to have gotten lost in recent times. The best book about music since JD King's as yet criminally unpublished "Like A 45 at 33".
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