Chapter 1: My Radio Crush Writes a Book.

Before I was married, I would lie in bed at night and listen to the smooth voice of Jian Ghomeshi before blissfully drifting off to sleep.  It wasn’t just the sound of his voice that I loved, but his probing questions and personal take on current events and cultural events often coincided with my own thoughts.  Nowadays, since I share my bed, I don’t regularly listen to his show “Q” on CBC radio, but when I do get the chance, I relish every minute. 

I wouldn’t call myself a Jian-groupie.  If I was, I might have actually been aware when his book came out.   But I only discovered this book while browsing things to do in my hometown and came across Ghomeshi’s book tour.  Wait a second, He wrote a book?!  And then I quickly switched to Amazon.ca and found the book entitled 1982.  1982!  That’s the year of my birth!!! Oh my goodness, our connection was meant to be.  I bought two tickets to his show, quickly followed by a trip to the local bookstore to pick up his book.

I immediately loved the style of 1982, most likely because it reads as Jian sounds.  But there are some things to like and some things to dislike.  So to honour a theme of Jian’s book, I will now move to the use of lists to classify my likes and dislikes.

Things I liked about Jian’s book

·                                          I can hear Jian’s voice in the words

·                                         Reliving numerous events I easily related to such as making mix tapes off the

                      radio, actually going to a store to buy music, and the stress of making phone

                      calls since you will inevitably have to talk to your friend’s parent/sibling.

Things I did not like about Jian’s book

·                                      The excessive use of random lists which were just reiterated thoughts already 

                     explained in the text

·                                      The number of pages dedicated to Jian’s red-blue Adidas bag (is it really that 

                     special or is he trying to fill pages)

·                                       I knew almost NONE of the bands Jian talked about . . .I guess I’m just too young.

·                                      The lack of point to the entire book.

Don’t get me wrong: I still love Jian Ghomeshi.  And his show was amazing.  And I got my book signed.

But as far as learning anything about Jian that would be useful to understanding him today? Nothing, nadda.  Perhaps a tale relying his journey to Q would have been more up my alley.  Or perhaps I am too young to appreciate Jian’s musical influences.  Whatever the reason, I’ll stick to listening to Jian on the radio.