This is a book about Nick Hornby's reading.

So instead of reading for yourself, you can read about his reading. Stupid, yes?

At first it is kind of fun, actually. Like following a blog. Then it gets more and more tedious and at last just painful.

If you decide to read this book, I suggest you do so as if it was a blog. Take a nibble here and there and do not treat it like a novel. Then maybe you will be okay.

Ack. I am not interested in any of the kinds of things that Hornby is, and am therefore frustrated at his allusions... he leaves out so much context that half the time I don't get what he's talking about at all. Also, it's not until about halfway through that he admits that he's not listing all the books he buys... I kinda thought that was the point... I mean, I want to know what tempts his impulses.

I also want to know how to get his gig; I know bloggers who are much more engaging and enlightening. And yet he doesn't use libraries but pays real money for all these books. I also want to know just a teeny bit about his wife, in re' "[last month] my third son was born." Um, to him, all by himself?

Oh well. It's a Little Free Library find and gonna go right back, tyvm.

Hornby is utterly honest and unpretentious when it comes to appraising both his varying abilities to read the books he has bought (in general, purchased books far outpace the read ones, of course) and the books he's actually read.

I love this: "all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal." That's the best nod to cognitive dissonance I've heard in some time. (Oh yes, I do intend to read those biographies of Rilke and Woolf on my shelf some day...)

Waste of time. Does one truly care what books Hornby bought, if he read them and if he plans to read them? And every chapter is a new list of books.