About the Author

ROB SHEFFIELD is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He has been a rock critic and pop culture journalist for fifteen years, and has appeared on various MTV and VH1 shows. He lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

"No rock critic- living or dead, American or otherwise- has ever written about pop music with the evocative, hyperpoetic perfectitude of Rob Sheffield. Love is a Mix Tape is the happiest, saddest, greatest book about rock'n'roll that I've ever experienced."
—Chuck Klosterman, bestselling author of Fargo Rock Cty, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Killing Yourself to Live and Chuck Klosterman IV

"This is a lightly-handed, skillful and sincere celebration of pop, of love, sad songs, bad songs and the long, nearly unbearable ache of being a young widower. Witty and wise; a true candidate for the All-Time Desert Island Top 5 Books About Pop Music."
—Kirkus, starred review

"I can't think of many books as appealing as Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape; Sheffield writes beautifully about music, he's hilarious, and his story is alternatingly joyous and heartbreaking. Plus, everyone knows there's no better way to organize history and make sense of life than through the mix tape."
—Haven Kimmel, bestselling author of She Got Up Off the Couch, A Girl Named Zippy and The Solace of Leaving Early

“A celebratory eulogy of life ‘in the decade of Nirvana.’”
—Publishers Weekly « starred review

“Sheffield's description of Renée’s brilliant eccentricity and lovable quirkiness causes the reader to fall in love with her just as he does.”
—Library Journal « starred review

"A glorious elegy to a pop culture-blessed decade and a tender, unforgettable tribute to the power of love"
—The Miami Herald

“Humorous, heartbreaking, and heroic.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Sheffield writes elegantly without turning it into a depressing tale of love stolen away too soon. . . . Wry and sardonic, even in his suffering, he’s the tragic romantic who never gets overwrought.”
—Newsweek

“The finest lines ever written about rock ’n’ roll . . . Like that song on the radio, every word of Rob’s book is true. Love is a mix tape.”
— Rolling Stone

“Many of us use pop culture as a mirror of our emotional lives, but Sheffield happily walks right through the looking glass.”
—Los Angeles Times

A celebratory eulogy for life in "the decade of Nirvana," rock critic Sheffield's captivating memoir uses 22 "mix tapes" to describe his being "tangled up" in the "noisy, juicy, sparkly life" of his wife, Renee, from the time they met in 1989 to her sudden death from a pulmonary embolism in 1997. Each chapter begins with song titles from the couple's myriad mixes-"Tapes for making out, tapes for dancing, tapes for falling asleep"-and uses them to describe a beautiful love story: "a real cool hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl" meeting in graduate school a "hermit wolfboy, scared of life, hiding in my room with my records," and how they built a tender relationship on the music they loved, from the Meat Puppets to Hank Williams. Their bond as soul mates makes his reaction to her death deeply moving: "I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language." But Sheffield's wonderful, often hilarious and lovingly detailed stories about their early romance and their later domestic life show how they created their own personal "mix tape" of life in the same way a music mix tape "steals moments from all over the musical cosmos and splices them into a whole new groove." (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

"No rock critic- living or dead, American or otherwise- has ever written about pop music with the evocative, hyperpoetic perfectitude of Rob Sheffield. Love is a Mix Tape is the happiest, saddest, greatest book about rock'n'roll that I've ever experienced."
-Chuck Klosterman, bestselling author of Fargo Rock Cty, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Killing Yourself to Live and Chuck Klosterman IV

"This is a lightly-handed, skillful and sincere celebration of pop, of love, sad songs, bad songs and the long, nearly unbearable ache of being a young widower. Witty and wise; a true candidate for the All-Time Desert Island Top 5 Books About Pop Music."
-Kirkus, starred review

"I can't think of many books as appealing as Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape; Sheffield writes beautifully about music, he's hilarious, and his story is alternatingly joyous and heartbreaking. Plus, everyone knows there's no better way to organize history and make sense of life than through the mix tape."
-Haven Kimmel, bestselling author of She Got Up Off the Couch, A Girl Named Zippy and The Solace of Leaving Early

"A celebratory eulogy of life 'in the decade of Nirvana.'"
-Publishers Weekly " starred review

"Sheffield's description of Renee's brilliant eccentricity and lovable quirkiness causes the reader to fall in love with her just as he does."
-Library Journal " starred review

"A glorious elegy to a pop culture-blessed decade and a tender, unforgettable tribute to the power of love"
-The Miami Herald

"Humorous, heartbreaking, and heroic."
-Entertainment Weekly

"Sheffield writes elegantly without turning it into a depressing tale of love stolen away too soon. . . . Wry and sardonic, even in his suffering, he's the tragic romantic who never gets overwrought."
-Newsweek

"The finest lines ever written about rock 'n' roll . . . Like that song on the radio, every word of Rob's book is true. Love is a mix tape."
- Rolling Stone

"Many of us use pop culture as a mirror of our emotional lives, but Sheffield happily walks right through the looking glass."
-Los Angeles Times