LOVE IS A MIX TAPE

author:
ROB SHEFFIELD

Non-fiction
240 pages
Three Rivers Press

“Have you ever had a hero? Someone who says, I think it would be a good idea for you to steal a car and set it on fire then drive it off a cliff, and you say, Automatic or Standard?!”

My first mistake with this book was not having read it sooner. My second mistake was reading all the sad parts in extremely public places, so I became that awkward girl blubbering like a baby over a paperback with cassette tapes on the cover. I’m not sure if it was the nineties music nostalgia, the deliciously corny one-liners or the heartbreaking realization that despite the fact that we live in a soul-suffocating world of mega-whats and giga-whos, love, kindness and our favorite songs on cassette really do exist, but I simply can not remember the last time I felt so connected to a book that I ached for it. It hurt to read, but at the same time, it was impossible not to.

Love is a Mix Tape is the story of an astronomically powerful relationship between Rob Sheffield, rock writer extraordinaire, and his late wife Renée, a woman the “world was cheated out of.” More than that, it’s the story about how they were brought together, and ultimately kept together after death by the songs that they loved. The book doesn’t just remind us readers about what it feels like to fall in love with another person, it forces us as fans of music to relive over and over again every time we fell in love with some song, some band or some moment of time in which music made us feel alive.

I have now read the book twice within the past five days, and I can say that if you judge this book by its cover like I did months ago, you are a damn fool. This is love and music in its very finest literary form. And it can be read within a day.

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