I loved this! The book is a collection of monthly articles that Nick Hornby writes for a magazine (The Believer). I can't even count how many times I laughed out loud. This book won't be for everyone but it was right up my alley. I have never read anything Nick Hornby has written but I am considering it now. I have already ordered the other three books in this series which are more collections of articles. I have to admit that I didn't love every single article but the ones I did love were enough to keep my rating at 5 stars.

How is it that I've never read any Nick Hornby before? I feel like I've been missing out, and now want to thrust this book at everyone I know and [to steal a quote from the book itself] declare, "This is me!

I always thought Hornby would be too dick-lit for my tastes; I did see the film versions of High Fidelity and About a Boy, but even those were just okay for me. When I saw Kim was reading this, and realized it was a book about books, (those are my weakness), I thought I'd give it a shot. I loved it. Loved it--even though I now have even more books on my to-read list (thanks a lot, Nick). I was amazed at how funny and smart Hornby's writing was, and finished it in one sitting.

Are his novels as good as his nonfiction?

This book was made for Goodreads. It's like Goodreads but on paper. Like, if Nick Hornby is your friend on Goodreads and he sends you fun updates on all the stuff he's reading. (Wait, can I be friends with Nick Hornby on Goodreads? I want to be friends with Nick Hornby!)
In addition to making me want to read many of the things he read (though, not, I confess the books on sports. He did say he was reading those so we didn't have to. . .) this book opens a window on the life of Nick Hornby, reader and writer. It's a nice window. Makes me want to be friends with Nick Hornby. Or I guess, it makes me feel like I'm already friends with this smart, self-effacing, funny, curious, populist but not too populist, wry, personable guy who really knows how to write.

This book made me laugh out loud. I've never read anything by Nick Hornby before, but I heard him mentioned recently on a podcast and decided to pick this up off my shelves. Hornby's reflections on the books he was buying and reading throughout 2003 and 2004 were such an honest depiction of the reading life, and despite having read approximately five of the hundreds of books he mentions in this series of essays, I related to the palpable love of books on every single page.

Certain of Hornby's jokes went a bit too far or not far enough, and I had trouble understanding what exactly was funny about them. Likewise, though many of the discussions of books were highly amusing, some of them went a bit over my head, side references to and snide remarks on books that everyone has supposedly read. The synopses of books I'd never heard of from Hornby's lists were fun, but the comparisons to other unfamiliar texts were a bit too much for me, and for those books that Hornby excerpted, I would have liked to read more of his reflections. Why this passage? Why this book? Nevertheless, Hornby's love for the classics is inspiring, and when I come across a collection of Nine Stories by Salinger this week, I scooped it up immediately, inspired by Hornby's first column, and I'm excited to read through them and compare our thoughts.

Nick Hornby is one of my soulmates. It doesn't matter that he doesn't know me personally or know I exist. I reserve the right to fall in love with every reader and lover of books, just a little bit. I want to be him. I want to get paid to do what he does. A bit of envy, then.

I reread some of the chapters in this book because I was studying how he talks about books. Each month for his column in The Believer, Hornby lists the books he has bought and the books he has read, followed by a narrative about how they are linked or how one led to another or excuses for why he hasn't read what or how much he expected to read.

I've marked a bunch of things to read and smiled/laughed at some of his thoughts on familiar authors or books (a description of Peter Hamilton calls him an "urban Hardy, with everyone doomed from the first page"), but more than that he made me fantasize about all the books I already own. Some I've started and set aside for other things but now they're running through my head, crowding each other for attention. Others I've always had good intentions to read and will, someday.... Hornby understands that just because your house is full of books to read does not mean you won't buy more of them.

This book was also discussed on the Reading Envy Podcast Episode 02.

Book blurb: In his monthly column "Stuff I've Been Reading", Nick Hornby lists the books he's purchased and the books he's read that month - they almost never overlap - and briefly discusses the books he's actually read.

This little collection of essays is a delightful read. Some people can vegetables, the rest of us hoard books. If you are the type of person who buys books whenever you walk by a bookstore, because even though you have 1000 or so unread books on your shelves at home, you are concerned about the coming apocalypse and are never sure that you have enough reading material to get you through those dark days ahead, then this is perfect book for you. Reading each short essay is like having a drink with a literate reader friend, and every essay adds more books to that pile you must someday read.

Funny that I have yet to read any of the author's novels, but there are 4 books in this essay series, and I plan to slowly savor my way through them all.

An impulse purchase after seeing a quotation from it somewhere, probably Facebook,and I really enjoyed it! Short essays about books and reading. I'd hardly heard of any of the books he talked about, and mostly they weren't the sort of books I like (I did add one of his recommendations, The Invisible Woman, by Claire Tomalin, to my list), but his reviews were entertaining and his writing about his reading and family life were very funny! Here are some favorite passages, which give an idea of his style...

"I don't want anyone writing in to point out that I spend too much money on books, many of which I will never read. I know that already. I certainly intend to read all of them, more of less. My intentions are good. Anyway, it's my money. And I'll bet you do it too."

(discussing the length of a Dickens novel, which, while not "spare," Hornby finds quite reasonable)
"But there comes a point in the writing process when a novelist -- any novelist, even a great one -- has to accept that what he is doing is keeping one end of a book away from the other, filling up pages, in the hope that these pages will move, provoke, and entertain a reader."

"But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not."

(from a review of A Life in Letters, by Anton Chekov...)
"As a special bonus, you also get some of those bad biopic comedy moments thrown in. "I went to see Lev Tolstoy the day before yesterday," he writes to Gorky. "He was full of praise for you, and said you were a 'splendid writer.' He likes your 'The Fair' and "In the Steppe,' but not 'Malva.'" You just know that there's only three words in this letter Gorky would have registered, and that he spent the rest of the day too depressed to get out of bed."


Oh, and he says Gosse's Father and Son is good, but that it took him a long time to decide to read it because he thought it would be depressing. Father and Son has been sitting on my shelf, unread, for years for exactly that reason, but Hornby's description, including, "OK, sometimes it reads like that Monty Python sketch about the Yorkshiremen, constantly trying to trump each other's stories of deprivation ("You lived in a hole in the road? You were lucky!") inspired me to move it from the back of the "to read" line to a front row shelf. That is persuasive writing!

A book about reading and reviewing books? This was tailor-made for Goodreaders!!11!1!!

IMO: you'd either develop a passionate hatred for it, or quite the opposite. I bought this two months ago and just waited for the right time to devour it. New Year's Eve/Day seemed appropriate. I've been gorging myself on too much crappy New Adult fiction, anyway.

I'm glad to say that I have an incredible amount of love for The Polysyllabic Spree. I found myself laughing out loud at parts. Nick Hornby has a ridiculously compulsive style of narration, perhaps compounded by the fact that the book is comprised of columns he wrote for the Believer. It also contains extracts of books he particularly liked. As someone wary of flimsy recommendations, I immediately began mentally adding to my to-read shelf after the first extract. (And Hornby reads poetry too! POETRY!) He takes us through his journey of "reader conflict", a journey I'm sure everyone here is familiar with. It's just interesting without shoving anything down your throat.

Hornby is also English and alludes to Arsenal Football Club a lot. They happen to be my second favourite English club. As a fan of the EPL, his natterings about abandoning books for the joy of crying over football felt like home to me. I recall him agonising over how Arsenal beat Liverpool (my first favourite club) 2-0 in a fictional book--at the time of writing, Arsenal hadn't beaten us with that scoreline since 1991. It's something I myself would do, should I have read that particular book.

Only one day into the new year and here's one for my 2013 favourites shelf!

El autor de About a boy escribe en su columna semanal ("Stuff I've been reading" de la revista Believer), recopilada acá, sobre los libros que compra y los que lee, aderezando de una forma amena, coloquial las listas con temas como deportes, paternidad (en su caso, de un chico autista), cine, música. Cada ensayo se siente como una conversa que debiste tener con un amigo al salir de una librería a por un café.

There were some good bits but overall I couldnt read it at one sitting. I read a part every now and then when I wanted to take a break from something else I was reading. It doesnt mean its bad but if you exceed a certain limit of pages a day it feels like Hornby talks too much and you will almost get a headache due to that talking.

I think I am going to stop partially writing reviews in my head before I finish the books, because, not only did Nick Hornby pull an extra star out of this one, but I have found that there are several books after all that I would read at his suggestion. The problem is, if you can call it a problem, that Nick Hornby and I have different tastes in books. You have to understand something though. I love Nick Hornby. High Fidelity is one of my favorite books of all time. I believe that I have most all of his books, except Fever Pitch (I am not a fan of sport), and I plan to read through them in my own time. I enjoy his wry sense of humor and sarcasm. Upon reading this book, however, I discovered that he and I are not reading kindred spirits. In fact, if he and I were in a book club, he would probably grow very frustrated with me, because I would think all his books were too serious and memoir-ish, and I would ridicule his love of Dickens. However, in the end he had a great quote from the letters of Chekhov, which makes me feel that I too would want to read the letters of Anton Chekhov and made me think that I had judged his list of books unfairly. He did mention several authors I do like in this book after all. Mr Hornby, you therefore get 4 stars! And a promise that we should perhaps be in one book club together if that were to work out. P.S. I love that the proceeds of this book go to two worthy causes.

Nick Hornby had me right from his opening paragraph:
So this is supposed to be about the how, and when, and why, and what of reading — about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the books are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time.
As he states, any similarly compulsive reader who "hasn't felt the same way isn't owning up."
A compulsive collector of books who admits to buying vast numbers of books he may not get around to reading for a long while, if ever, Hornby found himself in what must surely be his dream job, that of composing a monthly column for a literary magazine, commenting on the books he has read that month — and offering clues as to his reasons for acquiring other books along the way. (Regrettably, it appears that the magazine "Believer" has since folded.)
Many of his references to books I haven't read certainly sent me scurrying about to locate unfamiliar material and as he predicts, one thing leads to another, and another ...
And so Hornby has set me off searching out contemporary writers such as Julie Orringer and also reconsidering mossy Victorians like Wilkie Collins — while discovering that some of today's iconic voices such as Patrick Hamilton are not to be found in our local library.
Meanwhile, I wish to applaud Hornby's proposal that those intending to write a biography should first go to the National Biography Office to get a permit that tells you the number of pages you get. (There will be no right of appeal.) It's quite a simple calculation. Nobody wants to read a book longer than — what? — nine hundred pages? OK, a thousand, maybe. And you can't really get the job done in less than 250. So you're given a maximum length if you're doing Dickens, say — someone who had an enormous cultural impact, wrote enormous books, and had a life outside them. And everyone else is calculated using Dickens as a yardstick.
I like this notion so much that I'd love to have it apply in similar fashion to books of all sorts, not just biographies. I'm sure that many of us have chafed at weighty tomes that would have been greatly improved by the liberal application of an editor's red pencil!
Many thanks to my friend Maryl, who, knowing my own obsession with books, kindly lent this small volume to me. It's both enlightening and provocative — and something that I would otherwise never have stumbled upon.