Near the beginning of this book, Nick tells us it's ok to put down a book that we are not enjoying. So I did.

"One man's struggle with the monthly tide of books he's bought and the books he's been meaning to read."

Struggle...

So it's fiction, right?

Probably maybe you need to be a Nick Hornby fan to enjoy this, IDK! It's old; collected book reviews from 2003-4 -- but since I never care about being up-to-the-minute with the latest release, I didn't care. Plus he's also talking about classics, plus he's just generally talking about life and he's often humorous.

Shouldn't every Goodreads member with more than 200 books read and more than 20 in the to-read pile own this book?

The only reason I didn't rate this a classic is one chapter is not fully up to Hornby speed. Turns out that column was written when his wife was 8 months pregnant.

Best book ever for reading addicts. I've already ordered the next one.

Fun, witty, quick and gave me enough want to reads for the rest of my days

Dieses Buch ist eigentlich nur eine Sammlung von Kolumnen, die Mister Hornby für die Zeitung Believer verfasst hat. Als ich mich damit angefreundet hatte (so Aneinanderreihungen von Kolumnen, die man sonst nur ein mal im Monat liest, finde ich ja irgendwie blöd), war ich eigentlich auch schon gut im Lesen drin.
Nick Hornby hat jeden Monat sein Leseverhalten dokumentiert und kommentiert. Zu Beginn jeder Kolumne listet er seine gekauften und tatsächlich gelesenen Bücher auf. All das könnte sicher echt spaßig sein - wenn ich doch nur wenigstens 1/3 der aufgezählten Bücher auch gelesen hätte. Um die Wahrheit zu sagen, habe ich von den meisten noch nicht mal was gehört. Das ist zwar nicht immer wichtig, weil Mister Hornby zu seinen erwähnten Büchern auch das Nötige erklärt, aber spannend macht es das ganze leider nicht.
Dafür musste ich wirklich oft lachen! Nick Hornby hat einen tollen Humor und weiß diesen ab und an sehr gut in ebenso lustige Worte zu fassen.

In kurz: Wenn ich alle gennanten Bücher gelesen hätte oder Nick Hornby seine Kolumnen über meine gelesenen Bücher schreiben würde, hätte mir dieses Buch einen Höllentrip voll Spaß gebracht.

I loved Hornby's narration - very casual and conversation-toned. I also enjoyed reading his experiences with books and the book recos he gave. And I secretly hope that someone will offer me a monthly article too, like his 'Stuff I've been reading'

A sheer pleasure to read. Fellow Goodreaders, if ever there was a book for us, this is it!

Hornby is a very engaging writer. Here, he shares his struggles as a reader - one who frequently buys more books than he can possibly finish. I personally share his struggle and I have a feeling that if you are a member of this site, you probably do too.

First written as a monthly column in Believer, we check in with Hornby over the course of a year and change as he stocks up and barely makes a dent in his growing personal library. On the strength of his suggestion I have personally found many promising new books that I will be checking out forthwith. I will also be giving Dickens another look very soon.

Great writing, great reading, and eminently relatable!

This is for the true bibliophile - for those I-can't-stop-buying-new-books-even-though-I-have-piles-unread-at-home types (a group to which I happily claim membership). Nick Hornby spent a little over a year analyzing his reading habits - what he bought, what he started and couldn't finish, what he loved - and each month printed an article in the Believer magazine with his musings. I was hesitant at first to read the collected articles because I though I'd have to have Nick Hornby's taste in books (whatever that is). What I found was a surprisingly insightful look at the love of reading. I found myself dog-earing pages to read passages on the phone to my father (my bibliophile role model), or to remind myself of books that sounded interesting (damn you, Nick Hornby, for encouraging my habit!). He really sums the whole thing up when he says, "I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal." Indeed. I highly encourage you to add this one to your collection.

Reading this series of essays is fascinating (and thank heavens he's written several more), and also tricky. Hornby's discussion of one book makes you obsessed with tracking down that book as of right now, but you also MUST read Hornby's next essay, which makes you obsessed with tracking down that next book, and before long you're sleep-deprived and have spent a bundle at Amazon. Take a few power naps and tackle these -- they're wonderful.

Reread this last night (in about an hour - it's slight) and almost stopped on page 25, agreeing with his statement "I don't reread books very often; I'm too conscious of both my ignorance and my mortality" but decided to carry on and the paragraph itself ended on the Bayardian conundrum "...when I tried to recall anything about [ Frank Conroy's Stop-Time :] other than its excellence, I failed...And I realized that...this this is true of just about every book...I haven't even read the books I think I've read."

We try not to let that get us down, of course - and on rereading, I found I had quite forgotten, since my first time through, how enthusiastic Hornby is about Patrick Hamilton, of whose work I have since read a decent chunk. Additionally Hornby's summary of the book Hangover Square reminded me that I had forgotten one of its most crucial aspects (the narrator's quasi-schizophrenic episodes).

So it is often worth rereading - the question is how to tackle everything else as well - one book in each hand, a severed corpus callosum?

Hornby is, I don't need to tell you, funny and engaging, someone I wish I knew and this collection (of columns for The Believer) provides good laugh out loud insights and lots of recommended reading.

Nick Hornby made me want to read Dickens. I haven't, yet, but he made me WANT to.