Stuff I've Been Reading

The title of this post is a blatant steal from one of my favorite authors, Nick Hornby and therefore it seems fitting that it be about his books. Hornby had a column by that name in a San Francisco literary magazine called "The Believer." Those columns, which were collected in three books, were about the books he had bought, the books he had read, the books he had started and never finished and the books he bought but would likely never get around to reading. It is a situation that reminded me immediately of my dad, so I recomended that he read the first collection, "The Polysyllabic Spree." As a result of this, my dad gave me a copy of the book for Christmas which, if you know him, isn't all that surprising.

These are nice collections for those who, like me, love Hornby's writing style. They are funny, frequently absurd, occasionally touching and give those of us who already buy too many books an excuse to buy more. I finished "The Polysyllabic Spree" and got about half way through "Shakespeare Wrote for Money." It's not the book's fault -- I just got a bit tired of essays and wanted to read fiction for a while. I haven't yet returned to it, or to the last collection, "Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt," but I don't really feel bad about that, seeing as Hornby has already confessed to owning so many books he will never read them all.

I also recently read Hornby's latest novel, "Juliet Naked." I'm sorry to say it was a disapointment. Which is not to say that I'm sorry I read it, just that it ultimately left me feeling unsatisfied. It is largely about people who are obsessed with music and musicians, a subject which he had already visited in a much more satisfying way "High Fidelity."

Although, frankly, the protagonist in "High Fidelity" has always seemed to me like a rough draft for the character of Will in Hornby's absolute best book, "About a Boy." The book, which was made into a movie starring Hugh Grant (one of the best film adaptations of a book ever made, if you ask me) explores the relationship between an aimless narcissist (played by Grant) and the awkward misfit of a teenage boy who to whom he inadvertantly becomes a father figure. The book and film are equally hilarious and sweet and I highly recomend them both.

If you are in to memiors, which I usually am not, Hornby wrote one called "Fever Pitch" about his obsession with the British football (that's soccer to us Americans) team, Arsenal. I was surprised how much I liked this book, to spite some of the minutia about English football teams and players. I think it was because Hornby reminded me of my husband, who has a similar obsession with our local (American) football team. I found myself reading passages aloud to him because they could have been taken directly from his life as easily as Hornby's.

Also worth reading are Hornby's "A Long Way Down" and "How to be Good." Although both have somewhat unsatisfying endings, they are both so bitingly funny and insightful about some aspects of human nature that I didn't really mind.