A review by acgood
Emotional Rescue: Essays on Love, Loss, and Life--With a Soundtrack, by Ben Greenman
2.0
I won a Kindle copy of this through a Goodreads giveaway.
When I saw the Goodreads rating for this before starting in, I cringed. Less than three stars on Goodreads is a feat reserved for those that have pissed off the general public, or really bad books. I kept that in mind going in, and to be honest, it's not that bad of a book writing-wise. It's just the execution of the premise that keeps it back.
The idea is a great one - writing essays on themes presented in your favorite songs. I've done that before myself. However these essays suffer from the same two problems; they're too short, and try to write about too many songs at once. He never is able to give either the theme or the songs he's writing about a fair enough shake. He seems to just get close to developing something when he wraps it up and is done, never really fully addressing anything that he has brought up.
It's the poor execution that keeps it at a two for me. I really can't give it anything more than that because it has a lot of technical issues. Greenman writes nice prose, but his plotting and structuring needs work.
When I saw the Goodreads rating for this before starting in, I cringed. Less than three stars on Goodreads is a feat reserved for those that have pissed off the general public, or really bad books. I kept that in mind going in, and to be honest, it's not that bad of a book writing-wise. It's just the execution of the premise that keeps it back.
The idea is a great one - writing essays on themes presented in your favorite songs. I've done that before myself. However these essays suffer from the same two problems; they're too short, and try to write about too many songs at once. He never is able to give either the theme or the songs he's writing about a fair enough shake. He seems to just get close to developing something when he wraps it up and is done, never really fully addressing anything that he has brought up.
It's the poor execution that keeps it at a two for me. I really can't give it anything more than that because it has a lot of technical issues. Greenman writes nice prose, but his plotting and structuring needs work.