So I've picked up a copy of Nick Hornby's Songbook, which is advertised on the packaging as "Your favorite writer talks about his favorite songs and songwriters," which is just about right. I'm taking my time with both the book and the accompanying CD, which I'm working through song by song, but so far it's pleasing in precisely the way one would hope. It's full of classic Hornby observations and one-liners, like the one about an obsessive fan who logs onto a Bob Dylan fansite "as if the website were CNN and Dylan's career were the Middle East," or this bit about "Thunder Road":

One of the great things about the song as it appears on "Born to Run" is that those first few bars, on wheezy harmonica and achingly pretty piano, actually sound like they refer to something that has already happened before the beginning of the record, something momentous and sad but not destructive of all hope; as "Thunder Road" is the first track on Side One of "Born to Run," the album begins, in effect, with its own closing credits.

Good stuff, this. Obviously there are many other bits that I could quote. And I was especially pleased to see "Smoke" by Ben Folds Five included in both the book and the CD, since I remember Noah rhapsodizing about that song many years ago, in very similar terms.