how to be good

As long time readers know (or maybe you don't) Maria and I read to each other. One of the joys of "naked Sunday" is the fact that we don't have to get up, spend the day wandering around the flat in our pyjamas (just 'cos it is called "naked Sunday" doesn't necessarily mean that we spend the day nekkid!), basically just slob about.

This Sunday we spent the whole morning (and a bit of the afternoon) in bed. We ate cereal, we drank cokes and we ate our way through a huge box of Runts. While we were doing this I read to Maria.

I love Nick Hornby. A lot of what he writes speaks to me directly. I can understand everything he goes through in "Fever Pitch" - hell, replace the word Arsenal for Sheffield United and it is probably my story. I know the characters in "High Fidelity", really know. But in this case I was reading "How to be Good".

I am a bleeding-heart, yoghurt-eating, tree-hugging, grauniad-reading liberal (I draw the line at sandal-wearing). The book is very funny, the book is very clever, the book points out all those little problems that we b-h, y-e, t-h, g-r liberals have to face. How in the 21st century do I come to terms with driving a car, owning property, earning more than the minimum wage when there are starving people in Africa? Well, the fact is I give the odd 50p (peso) to a homeless person, I phone in my credit card donation to Live Aid, some of my best friends are not white. The book asks the hard questions - what if you actually did become a fully-fledged b-h, y-e, t-h, g-r liberal - what if you actually took a homeless person in - what if you tried to solve all the big/global problems but in a small/personal way. Many of the ideas made me cringe - but in that way that "The Office" makes you cringe.

'Twas a jolly good read. Gotta lurve Nick Hornby.

Years ago I received a rejection letter from the legendary Dore Schary. It began, "I wanted to like this more than I did." Wow, what a classy way to send someone packing. No wonder he survived the grueling game of Hollywood as long as he did. Anyhow, that's how I feel about this book of Nick's. I am a fan and I wanted and expected to like it more than I did.

Maybe it's me. I found it more pathetic than funny. And more serious than I wanted to get.

Told in first person from the viewpoint of the female main character, it reminded me of an Anne Tyler novel (I'm a big fan of hers, too.) Except in her books, I end up loving all the characters for their quirks and even for their sins.

Nick's characters in this one mostly piss me off.

3,5

/ Kann man Leid vergleichen? Reicht es, sich mit seinen eigenen Problemen auseinanderzusetzen, oder ist es unsere Pflicht, uns auch um die der anderen zu kümmern?

Das Buch schafft es, auf unterhaltsame Weise ganz große Fragen zu stellen. Es zeigt die Widersprüchlichkeit des „Gutseins“ in Theorie und Praxis auf - die realistischen Konsequenzen auf gelebten Idealismus. Auch wenn die theoretische Logik noch so schlüssig und unbestechlich ist, will oder kann und wird man diese aus Bequemlichkeitsgründen doch nicht ausleben. Aufschlussreiches Buch.

Έξυπνο,πανέξυπνο θα έλεγα,ο Χορνμπυ σε μεγάλες φόρμες.Αντρας,γυναίκα,παιδιά,σχέσεις,Λονδίνο,υπέροχο και δροσερό.

Nick Hornby--WTF? How to Be Good marks a low point for one of the very best writers working today. Boring, shallow, and stupid. The main characters are irritating beyond belief.

A selection of reviews/responses

1. Alan Coren could never bring himself to write a bad review. When confronted by a dreadful Jeffrey Archer book (adjective redundant) he merely wrote that "fans of Jeffrey Archer will enjoy this latest offering." I'm sure fans of Nick Hornby will enjoy this one.

2. Everyone has one good book in them. Unfortunately for anyone reading this book, Nick Hornby had already written his good book. (Fever Pitch in case you're interested.)

3. A dreary and uninspired re-telling of Mary Poppins. Stick with Mary Poppins. It's faster, funnier and succeeds in telling us something about the human condition.

4. Starts badly, tails off a bit in the middle and the less said about the ending, the better. *But otherwise quite commendable.

5. I blame contracts and deadlines. This is a thin idea that would surely have ended in the waste basket if there were no contractual obligations to complete a manuscript.

6. Write about what you know is good advice. Which is why Fever Pitch is good and this is wearisome.

7. The one strength of this book is that it exposes the false premises of the metropolitan lifestyle. Unfortunately Hornby has no understanding of how other people live.

8. Middle class tosh. Entirely dreary but mostly harmless.

9. Very much the adult book that Michael Morpurgo would write if he lived in London. Shares the same sense of a long-winded school assembly where you are told right from wrong by someone who has less idea than you do.

10. The blurb comments by other writers (on the cover) smack of the sort of off-the-shelf-ness that suggests that they haven't read the novel. I cannot connect them with the contents of the book.

11. I'm sure Mariella Frostrup would think it deep and revealing of the human condition.

12. Reminded of how the potentially interesting Reese Witherspoon film "Wild" was destroyed by the script.

* Stolen from Blackadder script. Too good and apt not to use occasionally.

The voice is pitch perfect. So easy to read, I snapped this up in three days. Funny, canny, with entertaining presentation of some ugly truths about the nuclear family.

::Spoilers start here::
Katie is going to sleep at a friend's apartment and thinking about why she wants to step away, have a time out from being David's wife. "That's all there is left, when you take away working hours and family suppers and family breakfasts: the time I get on my own is the time I would have spent being a wife, rather than being a mother or a doctor. (And God, how frightening, that those are the only options available. The only times when I am not performing one of those three roles is when I am in the bathroom.)"

I liked how Katie has moved to some self knowledge by the end of the book. She knows that she wants to be with her family, including her husband. She knows that it's important that they function and support each other as a family and not invite various acquaintances into that intimacy. She knows that she needs to read and take in art in order to nourish her mind. She's fairly clear that she will choose middle class complacency and the easy path rather than engaging with every issue that comes past. But she's still ignorant of her own values beyond these items. I thought the last line of the book was an atonal clash with what was a satisfying falling together at the end. But I grant that Katie has not widened her consciousness very far and has not done wrestling with her selfish ness and her vanity about being "good". So the blankness she sees beyond her family makes sense.

Nick Hornby tackles suburbia, white liberalism, marriage, and life according to the Gospels in a secular world in his excellent book "How to Be Good". While it's been a few years since I read this, the book resonated with me. I'm pretty sure, at the time, I was re-evaluating my status as a devout Christian, and the question of how to be good in a world that, occasionally, favored the bad was foremost on my mind. When I read this I had just entered my 30s, and my 20s were rough. I had spent a lot of my 20s getting drunk, going to strip clubs and raves, trying (unsuccessfully) to have one-night stands, and taking pleasure in pissing off friends and family. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, an asshole. It was right around this time, too, that I reconnected with some friends who invited me to a Bible study. Unlike many Christians, these guys weren't judgmental, boorish, or arrogant about their Christianity. They were pretty open and honest about it, and they knew the kind of lifestyle I was leading. They didn't seem to care. Long story short: I became a Christian. I've had my ups and downs (I'm currently in a "down" phase), but I've always tried to live by Christ's Golden Rule. Hornby encapsulates a 21st-century philosophical and existential dilemma: How can we be good when so many things around us are tempting us to be bad?

Potentially an all-time favourite, I’ve never read anything like this that keeps so engaged and hungry for more but equally anxious and paranoid while reading. This will stick with me for my whole life - chock full of lessons and parables.

Mai fidarsi delle recensioni e del polverone mediatico sollevato attorno ai libri. Quando è uscito non l'ho letto subito perché condizionata da articoli più o meno ironici sulla impossibilità della bontà di David. Un libro non deve essere né vero, né verosimile, deve essere quel che pare all'autore! Se ne può essere oltraggiati, stimolati, annoiati, ma a quel punto possiamo chiuderlo. A me questo libro è parso notevole, sia per l'idea che per la "controidea". La moglie non è toutcourt cattiva, si sforza di capire e comprendere, ma allo stesso tempo si vuole mantenere sanamente egoista. Mentre leggevo ero decisamente curiosa di vedere se riusciva a terminare il libro senza rompere il "meccanismo" (non lo dico, leggetelo, ne vale la pena). La post-conclusione, i libri sono una gran consolazione, o no?

I found this to be very humourous, clever and subtle - written in the first person by a female GP, married with two children. Her already untidy life is turned upside down when her husband discovers an odd do-gooder with apparent healing powers and seems to totally change his personality. The story is used as a vehicle for a lot of ironic humour about affluent liberal values in North London. Great fun and well-written

Τελικά το ειχα ξαναδιαβάσει. Δεν θυμομουν τίποτα.
Παραξενο ρε παιδι μου πώς μερικά βιβλια περασαν και δεν ακουμπησαν που λενε, κι άλλα χαρασσονται μέσα σου σαν με ξυράφι..