‘High Fidelity’ by Hick Hornby turned out to be a great read, which surprised me. I really like the John Cusack/Jack Black/Stephen Frears (Dir.) movie version, and my usual experience has been that I’ll like the book or the movie, but rarely both. Notable exceptions to the Rule, ‘Field of Dreams’ and ‘The Natural’, like ‘High Fidelity’ take important liberties with the original story. The movie version of ‘The Natural’ is a New Testament story, and the Bernard Malamud story is an Old Testament story, although the common religion is baseball and both of the stories work. W.P. Kinsella’s ‘Shoeless Joe’ needed to be paced differently to find a good screen version in ‘Field of Dreams’ (not great … some of the casting decisions were completely mailed in). The source of the dramatic resolution in the movie version of ‘High Fidelity’ is modified in a subtle but critical way (although the resolution remains the same … I told you it was subtle), and I think it makes a better story of it. I’m not a big Hornby fan … ‘How to Be Good’ was Bad, and ‘Fever Pitch’ was vapid. But the book is smooth and captures the out-of-gear state of the middle-aged male psyche really well.