Imagine having access to Nick Hornby's Goodreads updates? Well this is pretty close, this collection of monthly columns he wrote for some magazine. Each month he lists what he bought and what he read. Its interesting because, well I love NH so I'm curious as to what he reads. He's such a great bloke, no literary snobbishness here, he just likes to read whatever grabs his interest. His reviews are engaging and he always ends up talking about other things or making excuses that he didn't read much because Arsenal are doing really well in the Championship at the moment and how many unread books he has groaning on his shelves but still he can't resist getting more..... bit like me, but with no hair and a football fixation. I'd love to go for a pint with him.

Vol 2 of Nick Hornby's articles from The Believer Magazine-is still as funny and heartfelt as the previous collection.
As with the first book the worst thing i can say about it is the frankly enormous to buy book list i am left with at the end of it. ;)

I hadn't read anything by Nick Hornby up til now, but I've decided I like him. He's very open to people's taste in books, he has a non-pretentious way of looking at reading (there's no need to push yourself into reading super hard books if it's going to ruin reading for you), he uses a fair amount of British terminology, he's funny and he's an Arsenal supporter.

I mean, who wouldn't want his job? You get to read books and write about them in a column! That does not sound too shabby at all. I want that job! He also keeps track of what books he's bought in a given month in addition to what he's read.

Hornby has some funny things to say about the books he reads. He's never apologetic about his opinion, but he's never flat-out mean about the books either. Either way, this is a good start to Hornby, and it's not a bad book to read when you want to read about someone writing about reading books.

A collection of the always hilarious articles Nick Hornby wrote about what he's reading for the month.

I always like Nick Hornby"s "massively with adventures in reading." Basically this book has 14 months of Hornby's columns in a British literary magazine called "Believer." Each months he buys a few books and reads a few others---he reviews the books, along with comments on British football, politics, and writing. I am reading two books he recommended in this edition, "Assassination Vacation" by Sarah Vowell and "Citizen Vince" by Jess Walter. I suppose the final analysis will come after I read these two books. Previously he recommended "David Copperfield," which was great and another book, escaping me for the moment, which I also enjoyed. I like his reviews better than his novels!

This compilation of Hornby's book reviews was a pleasure to read, and the books that appeal to me are now on my library list.

Here's a short quote: "There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more fun. Persons of Letters have to read things like Candide or they're a few letters short of the whole alphabet; book lovers, meanwhile, can read whatever they fancy."

Amen to that. I'm definitely a book lover.

Funny, insightful and a quick way to discover what should be on your "to-read" lists.

Excellent literary essays.

I think Nick Hornby is the best. I love his constant jabs at the "Spree," the x number of robed overseers of the Believer magazine. I even love it when he reviews books I haven't read, which is the case for the most part in this book (with some exceptions, notably Assassination Vacation, which I loved when I read it years ago). The "chapters" are basically entries from different months, so it's easy digesting. I like how he puts things about reading, too - that reading something too fast doesn't allow it to "stick" but some books are all "sludge" and take far too long. He also mentioned his memories of reading in church to make the service go by faster, which I also did when I was a little kid - it helped me focus on the readings.

This collection seemed to lack the focus that the previous collection (The Polysyllabic Spree) had. In fact, I had a hard time getting through the middle of this book, and I think it was because Mr. Hornby had a few column entries (or months, as it were) where he didn't read much, and what he did read, I wasn't even remotely interested in. He also did himself no favors in the preface with his argument that people should just put down books that they aren't really enjoying. I damn near took his advice.

I'm glad I stuck it out, though, because toward the end of the book he discussed some titles that I would be more than willing to seek out and read now that I'm aware of them (Moondust, The March, Persepolis, All The King's Men - although I was already vaguely aware of the latter two, it's nice to read something conversational about them rather than a critical review). I feel that the strength of these collections is primarily in what books it encourages you to read in the future, and for that reason alone, I'll eventually track down the third and fourth volumes. I just hope I enjoy them more.

I suppose this book should probably receive five stars -- the writing was light, fun, intelligent, and everything I expect from Hornby -- but I suppose I'm marking him down for the number of books that *I* will now read on his recommendation. Not that I would be annoyed by my ever-growing To Read list, but on the contrary, I expected to find more than a handful from this volume, especially since I was already planning to read several of his choices.

Still, the reviews are excellent and often had me reading out loud to anyone in the room who would listen. I look forward to Shakespeare Wrote for Money, but I think I might read something else in between. I've been reading and listening to a lot of British humor, and my internal monologue is developing an accent. Before I start sounding phony and pretentious, I'm going to switch to Lewis Black and "Richard Castle" for a couple weeks.

In one of these essays, Hornby decides he's sick of his own taste in books ("cute, sad literary novels"), thinks of reading one about the peregrine falcon, picks up an SF novel instead and abandons it after 20 pages, baffled even by the back-cover summary. He's a joy to read: intelligent, unpretentious and very, very funny.