This review’s content may be confusing, annoying, trite or downright laughable to persons not born between 1965 and 1978. Hell, it may be all of that and more to just about anyone. Consider yourself warned.

Put your thinking caps on ‘cuz I’ve got some trippin’ down memory lane for you:
Where were you when you first heard ‘A Day in the Life’? What about ‘Wild World’? What did you think when you finally understood the meaning of ‘She Bop’? What does ‘My Heart Will Go On’ mean to you? Do you know whe More...

Love Is A Mix Tape just absolutely knocked my socks off.

I devoured this book in one weekend and enjoyed every single page, heartily. This is ostensibly a book about mix tapes, and looking back at a life spent seeing the world in a series of 45-minute vignettes (then, of course, you flip the tape over). Rob Sheffield has penned an honest (yet wildly entertaining) book that affected me more deeply than any book I've read in recent memory, woven throughout with a genuine and bleeding love for music More...

Oh man, shucks.
I loved this book.
I could say that the story arc could have been stronger or that he could have talked about mixtapes more (even though he talked about them a lot, I never get sick of it). But I won't. I don't care about those things.

I care that I basically love this book way too much. There are many reasons.

1) I am a sucker for exercises in love and grief, which a lot of this book is--his wife died suddenly after they were married for like 5 years, and most of the book is about h More...

I didn't really know what this book was about until I started flipping through it last night. I bought it as a last minute, bargain priced add-on from Barnes & Noble, pretty much just to bump up my total to $25 so I could get free shipping. The title caught my eye since making mixtapes took up a lot of time during my teenage years. Seriously, when the iPod was first introduced, I thought it was the greatest invention since the automobile.

Anyway, I was expecting this to be a humorous, dick-li More...

Opening line:"The playback:late night, Brooklyn, a pot of coffee, and a chair by the window. I'm listening to a mix tape from 1993."

Before I-pods and ripped CDs we all made mix tapes. I'm sure most of us over a certain age still have them safely hidden away somewhere, never quite having had the nerve to throw them out (broken cases and all) We named these tapes, gave them away to friends or lovers and assigned them different purposes. Remember the break-up tape, the I'm so infatuated with you ta More...

If you've lost someone that you cared deeply for you know the frustration in not being able to express who that person was to others. The on going loss that comes from meeting new people and knowing they will never know this person (this HUGE part of your life) can seem crippling at times. In some ways this book appears to be Sheffields attempt to make his wife known to us after her very early death. Personally, I don't think he succeeded. His short lived marriage to her seemed sweet in a teen a More...

This is the kind of memoir I'd like to have written (albeit without the deceased wife).

I've had a few conversations with friends in the last year or so about the long-lost art of the mix tape, which has been delivered a death-blow by the digital age. Burning a CD mix just isn't the same; for one, it doesn't take nearly as long to make a CD mix, which cheapens the sentiment attached to giving one to someone, especially when the hope is that the gesture and the songs themselves with make the reci More...

I picked up this book because of the title. I loved the idea of the intense power of music to draw on memory and expected my own memories to mesh with the story. But I found Sheffield's mesh of music unusual, sometimes jarring, and I found myself not connecting with it as much as I'd like. It was a bittersweet memoir with a few humorous moments, but there wasn't anything unusual or memorable in his story.

Quotable moments:

But most of all, I regret turning thirteen, and staying that way for the n More...

Now I know someone likes making mix tapes (and by extension mix cds) as much as I do. I also know someone's as crazy about the corniness and desperation of 90s music as I am about 80s music. When I embrace some of mainstream music's most desperate attempts to throw something profound into our pop culture - take Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" or Spandeau Ballet's "True" - I know author Rob Sheffield will join me in my heartfelt applause. And, like Sheffield, I think my generation of music - More...

I didn't like this as much as others have seemed to. And what I liked most was probably what others discarded--I liked hearing about the signifcance of all the songs and mixes and bands. But the love story? Sap-tastic and hit-me-over-the-head-repetitive.

Every tenth line of the first long chapter is heavy foreshadowing mixed with hipster melodrama--you know, "That music changed my life. But Renee was my life. And then my life went away." Then something like "Love isn't like a cassingle. It's lik More...

I started reading this book during the two-day buffer between the beginnings of both 2012 proper and the working year, thinking that I’d have to look no farther than the other end of the couch if the story really destroyed me to the point of needing my myriad mostly-under-control-but-always-threatening-to-surface spousal fears allayed by husbandly hugs. Turns out, catching up on laundry and tidying up our soon-to-be-vacated first home ate into my reading time and I wound up finishing this about More...

Anybody who grew up in the 80s and 90s remembers making mix tapes. You made them for yourself, you made them for friends, you made them for her (or him, as the case may be). You took songs from records, cassettes, CDs, and the radio and mixed them into the order you wanted and, sometimes, you even had running commentary in the form of your own voice during the gaps or the DJ from the radio station from which you recorded the track.

But have you ever defined your life based on these recordings?

Tha More...

I really wanted to like this book, despite my mild dislike for Sheffield's writing in Rolling Stone magazine. While the story is heartbreaking -- he becomes a widower earlier than anyone should be allowed to -- I was expecting much more insight than what's provided in this slim tome (I read it in one sitting.)

The story boils down to this -- music nerd from Boston meets awesome Appalachian girl who is everything he isn't. You know where the story is heading after he is instantly smitten when she More...

This book is hilarious! I thought it would be sad, but wasn't. I'm loving it and can relate to Rob's style of writing. He speaks in music and lyrics, and that I feel connects us on a spiritual level =) I LOVED this book! Even when I was arguing with him on his timeline (yeah, I talk to my books sometimes haha), I couldn't help but love his conviction on how right he thought he was. This book made me laugh, and smile and send quotes to everyone I know. Even when the book turned sad, it wasn't ove More...

I’m having a really hard time reviewing Love is a Mix Tape and I can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s because this book was as near to perfect as I could ever hope. Or maybe it’s because, as anyone who is familiar with the late 90s tour de force Playing by Heart (all 10 of you) knows, talking about love is like dancing about architecture. I don’t know if that’s true or not, because Rob Sheffield talks about love just fine. Maybe he has a dance about The Sears Tower, too, and that’s what his next boo More...

The early stuff about Renee was so good and I like the '90s love. Everything else is boring and self indulgent.
I like looking at the playlists on the mix tapes.

I watched "It Might Get Loud" and then wanted to read a music book. I started this one, and got a third of the way through before coming up for air. It's wonderful - romantic and sad, pop culture-y, with just enough literariness to keep me on my toes.

Last fall, I was sitting at the kitchen table of two friends who have been together since 1972. They tell me a story about how they got together. She couldn't decide between two suitors, so she left New York City to spend the summer in an ashram. (D

More...

I loved this book. If you know me well, you know I am obsessed with music and the old mix-tape was the medium that introduced me to most of the stuff that I love.
This isn't really a spoiler as the book cover makes no effort to hide that Rob Sheffield will become a widow over the course of this memoir. Rob tells us about a girl named Renee and all of the wonderful idiosyncratic things about her and how music and mix-tapes were the glue that held them together, until her untimely passing and yet t More...

One of my friends told me to read it and said I would enjoy it.
I liked parts of it a lot: the discussion of the nature of mix tapes v. other mediums and the way that music can define relationships, the fun new songs I found for the first time/remembered, and the really poignant description of his wife's death. This was in some ways more unsettling for me than The Year of Magical Thinking, mainly because they were both so young. They didn't get a chance to live their lives together. It was very, More...

I dare you to try and not like this book. I guarantee you'll fail. This book is a beautifully crafted mix of everything. It's about music, yeah. There's talk of some pretty sweet tunes in there and anyone who grew up in the 80's and 90's knows the significance of the mix tape. The book is also one of the greatest unconventional love stories I've ever read.

Reading Love Is a Mix Tape is like listening in on the soundtrack to Rob Sheffield's life. He takes you through the music of his youth, failed More...

someone once very astutely described van morrison's "brown eyed-girl" to me as a song that every girl wants someone to put on a mix tape for her and I feel like, appropriately, this book is the literary equivalent of that idea. the way that sheffield writes about his wife, falling in love with her, being married to her, and losing her is evocative and both captures the way you can feel about someone you love, as well as being exactly the way you would want someone to describe you/being in love w More...

Any book that describes the summer of '94 as a series of drunken southern barbecues populated by mod-girls and indie rock dudes who always ended the party with the girls singing along to the entirety of Liz Phair's 'Exile In Guyville' on the back porch (word for word) while all the guys listened intrigued and obsessed and befuddled in the kitchen is A+ in my book. See also, the tragic passage inspired by Sleater-Kinney's 'One More Hour', the eulogy to the '90s, and the author's recipe for the pe More...

Holy Smokes . . . if you've never had a heartbreak where a CD / tape / or album didn't get you through, then this book isn't your calling . . .

Yet, have you ever lost one you've loved and that damn tune makes you shutter when you believe you've escaped the loss, but to have it be relived with recall . . .

This book made me think so much of my college roommate / & high school friend, Amber . . . we swore the only reason we got such crappy grades in college is that we had too many song lyrics More...

I think music junkies would appreciate this book much more than I did. It felt like an inside joke, as such I couldn't connect to the storyline and characters.

A touching book about Sheffield's all too brief marriage and the music that helped define it. I liked the idea of framing his life - and, specifically, his relationship with Renee - around mix tapes, and I think it was a great touch to include the track listings at the beginning of each chapter. He did a good job of making Renee come alive to readers who have never met her, and I think he did nearly as good a job trying to convey just how broken he was after losing her.

It was an interesting comp More...

loved this book. It mentions a lot of bands from the 90s but I don't think that you need to have a lot of background regarding this music to appreciate the book. It is a human story about falling in love, losing it and how music played an important part in the journey. Anyone that relates specific music to a memory, whether a good or bad memory, would enjoy this book. I feel like I could say so much more about this subject...but it is a review not a blog entry. SO READ IT and discover its greatn More...

I spent Saturday afternoon reading in the sun in Charlottesville, Virginia, the way I spent many weekends when I lived in this little town.

Dar Williams refrains filled the cul-de-sac, and the wireless networks were named "TJistheman", "PabstBlueNetwork", and "moonbaker" (the last, perhaps belonging to a baker at Mellow Mushroom pizza near campus).

I thought about how hard it is to leave this place, and the first time I heard the author's name of the book I was reading, Love is a Mix Tape. Rob S More...

Before there were playlists, there was the CD mix, and before that, the mix-tape. I have a big fondness for the cassette tape. Maybe because my mom gave me a Walkman and it changed my life. All of a sudden, I could listen to something anywhere and everywhere, and it felt like these singers were only singing to me! I used to do mix tapes all the time, where I would cull favorite songs, and there was an artistic science to how I would order the songs. Some tapes are so embedded on my mind that eve More...