Book Review: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

Title: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Author: Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
Release Date: May 23rd 2006

Publisher: Alfred F. Knopf Books for Young Readers

Age Group: Young Adult

Source: Bought
Goodreads

"I know this is going to sound strange, but would you mind being my girlfriend for the next five minutes?"

Nick frequents New York's indie rock scene nursing a broken heart.

Norah is questioning all of her assumptions about the world.

They have nothing in common except for killer taste in music, but one awkward chance encounter turns into an all-night quest to find a legendary band's secret show in the mystic maze of Manhattan - and a first date full of falling in and out (and in and out, and maybe in and maybe out) of love.

I had one rule when it comes to book-to-movie adaptations: if I haven't read it, then I have no right to watch it. But a little before 2015 ended last week, I decided to break that rule and watched Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, and although I eventually found out that it's almost a complete one-eighty from the book, it did have me running to the bookstore as soon as I could. Good job, movie!

No, bitch, I mean you intimidate guys with a look or a comment before they can decide if they want a chance with you. You're so judgmental. Along with frigid.

Unlike the simple, whimsical tone of the movie, the book is filled to the brim with teenage punk and emotions that poured out of the page, and because I saw the movie first, it was like the book took the plot of the movie, laid it on paper, and colored it with crayons such as "Sweaty Club" and "Can't Get Over My Ex". Or to put it simply, the book is more emotionally complex than the movie, but that's definitely not to say it was a bad movie. I actually really enjoyed it, and Michael Cera with a bass guitar is surprisingly hot, and the soundtrack is amazing.

Feminism should be all-inclusive - it should be about sexual liberation, equal pay for equal work, and the fundamental girl right of boy2boy appreciation.

Just like Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (I seriously have a love-hate relationship with these titles, ugh) is the kind of book that you can start and finish in one sitting because reading it is so easy, so comforting to read, like you're chatting with a long-time friend or curling up in bed with your headphones on on a rainy day. And I love how the authors made all of their characters, not just the main ones, jump out of the page, each of them unique and equally interesting.

I shouldn't want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist.

Perhaps the only thing I disliked about this book is how similar Nick and Norah sounded, so much so that most of the time I had no idea whose perspective I was reading - but maybe that's only another indication of how in sync they were, because I honestly believe your musical soulmate is one of the few - if not the One - for you, and believe me when I say that this book, even if punk music grates on your ears, is going to be your musical soulmate.

MY FAVORITE PART was the Marriott. Good heavens.

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