Bryan's Reviews > Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

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 is the only other person in a University of Virginia bar to recognize that Big Star's second album is playing.

They make a connection and later, much to his surprise, they fall in love and get married. After his wife is tragically taken away from him he spends the final half of the book telling the reader over and over to the point of irritation how awesome his wife was.

While each chapter begins with a playlist of a mix tape he or his wife had made, Sheffield doesn't write enough about the songs on the tapes. Why did he select certain songs over others? What makes a good tape. For a man who made tapes for such mundane chores as washing the dishes and walking the dogs, it's a cop-out not to write about the music itself. Of course, that may not be a bad thing. You would think that someone who writes for Rolling Stone would have high standards for determining what makes a good song. Not Sheffield. To him, all music is great, from the Replacements to Journey to the J. Geils Band. Makes you wonder how he wound up writing for a national magazine. Unfortunately we never learn because Sheffield is too busy telling how awesome his wife was. I wanted at least some idea of how he climbed out of his grief to become a columnist for one of the most storied music magazines in the country.

Sheffield likes to liberally sprinkle his writing with pop culture references as a way to show cool and ironic he is, and this book is no exception. While sometimes the references make you smile, most of the time they come off like the junior high social outcast who tries to show how hip he is by making jokes about the Dukes of Hazzard or Star Trek.