The reason I started buying vinyl again was that I didn’t think I was making enough of a commitment What does a record provide that other formats do not? But what I wanted from my books was the kind of punch and accessibility that the best popular music has. As a consequence of my time wasting, I was unfit for the kind of highflying career that some of my friends embarked on after college. I wasted my time at university, and one of the ways I wasted it was by looking for vinyl in the secondhand shops around the town. How did vinyl records influence your writing process? The only limit is your ignorance-so only knowing the Top 40 is a disadvantage. This is particularly helpful if you know a lot about music already.

These are wonderful times to be a music fan: every piece of music ever made, more or less, is available to you in a device the size of a cigarette packet for no, or very little, money. I like it, and still buy it, for reasons that I’ll get into. In 2000, it became a feature film and went on to be made into a Broadway musical in 2006. High Fidelity has sold over a million copies. The book follows Rob and his employees, Dick and Barry, as they discuss their desert-island 'top five' music lists and the importance of mix tapes. Of these, his best known is High Fidelity, which centers around the life and trials of London record shop owner Rob Fleming. Nick Hornby is a writer who has published essays, screenplays, lyrics, and novels. Read below for just one of the 25 interviews you can find in the book. Editor's note: We invited author Jennifer Otter Bickerdike to submit an excerpt from Why Vinyl Matters: A Manifesto from Musicians and Fans, released in October 2017 from ACC Publishing Group.

Rob fleming nick hornby