Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

One night in New York. Nick is the straight bassist in a queer punk band, still raw from a breakup. Norah is the daughter of a music industry executive who knows every club and every band in the city. They meet at a show, fake-date to avoid an ex, and spend the rest of the night navigating the Lower East Side music scene together — shows, record stores, diners, the specific electricity of a city that is fully alive at 2am. Cohn and Levithan alternate chapters in Nick's and Norah's voices, giving equal weight to both perspectives. The music world they move through is rendered with real specificity and love — this is not a backdrop but the actual subject, a world where what you listen to is who you are and where finding someone who gets your playlist is finding someone who gets you. The most joyful argument on the DoCR shelf that a creative life organized around music and art and the people who love those things is a life worth living.