I enjoyed reading this, of course - I long ago made my peace with the 'fork and any list of this kind, along with brief accompanying wraps on each of the inclusions, put together by the site was always going to be at least readable. Moreover, breaking the book up into three or four year periods (each introduced by a brief overview of the time) and making some attempt to arrange the songs within each of those periods into an approximate narrative of the musical milieu of the time works well - while also reinforcing the sense, generated in the first instance by the selections themselves, that the 500 here really do reflect a kind of contemporary 'indie' canon consensus (which at the same time forces the realisation of just how influential pitchfork has been, because really their purview extends considerably beyond even the broadest notion of 'indie' or 'alternative') - and the interspersed mini-lists are a nice touch.
That said, something about the format seemed to result in the write-ups being less inspiring than I might have expected; of the songs that I know (extended pause now while I count them: 182...and I've just realised that I like, and in most cases really, really like nearly every one of those), only a very small handful made me want to really go out and listen to them again, loud, and only one of that small handful remains in my mind right now (the one on "Cross Bones Style", for one particularly piquant turn of phrase); moreover, there wasn't a single one on a song that I didn't already know that made me think that I had to hear it.
There doesn't seem much point going into individual selections, though I must say I was pleased that "Lazy Line Painter Jane" cracked the list - and, as I mentioned before, the canonical nature of the list is striking in patches (though there are probably easily a hundred more which would've taken their places just as easily as 'obvious' choices had they in fact been included).
Songs that the list has got me to listen to in the last few minutes (though not particularly, as noted above, due to the way they're described in the book): "Headache" by Frank Black (I still like "Bad Harmony" more), "Heartbeats" by the Knife, "The City" by the Dismemberment Plan, "Ever Fallen in Love" (Buzzcocks of course).
