"Books are, let's face it, better than everything else," writes Nick Hornby in his "Stuff I've Been Reading" column in The Believer. "If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go 15 rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic Flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on point And every now and again you'd get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I'm still backing literature 29 times out of 30." This book collects Hornby's popular columns in a single, artfully illustrated volume with selected passages from the novels, biographies, collections of poetry, and comics under discussion.
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The Polysyllabic Spree is the first title in the Believer Book series, which collects essays by and interviews with some of our favorite authors—George Saunders, Zadie Smith, Michel Houellebecq, Janet Malcolm, Jim Shepard, and Haruki Murakami, to name a few. These attractive books combine material previously published in the Believer with new, shockingly good material. In addition, Believer Books is happy to introduce our audience to titles from around the non-English-speaking world (places like Sweden, Portugal, and Madagascar), translated and published in English for the first time.These jacketed paperbacks will feature a recognizable and cohesive style and will be affordably priced.
About the Author
Hornby is the author of Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy, and How to be Good. Songbook, his collection of essays on music, was a finalist for the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award.
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More About the Author
Nick Hornby is the author of the novels A Long Way Down, How to Be Good (a New York Times bestseller), High Fidelity, and About a Boy, and of the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and editor of the short-story collection Speaking with the Angel. He is also the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award, and the Orange Word International Writers London Award 2003.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Brief History of One Author's Reading Habits,
By Clare Quilty (a little pad in hawaii) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Polysyllabic Spree (Paperback)
I always enjoy it when, during interviews, journalists will mention something that their subject is reading, watching or listening to. An early Rolling Stone profile of R.E.M., for example, once mentioned that Peter Buck was buying a copy of a book by Jim Carroll, which pointed me the way to "The Basketball Diaries," a book that warped my then-young mind like a breath of fresh airplane glue.
I'm also a big fan of Nick Hornby's writing, so "The Polysyllabic Spree" is double the pleasure for me because it's a series of articles he wrote for "The Believer," chronicling his reading habits for the better part of a year. In his typical conversational style, Hornby simply lays out his likes and dislikes, offering the reader potential listings for their own reading lists. I'm an avid but severely undisciplined reader and was heartened to read that even a bestselling author sometimes sets aside a great novel in favor of a football game. Just as "Songbook" was Hornby's meditation on music and life and living, "The Polysyllabic Spree" is a quick (I would contend *too* quick) and friendly tour of his bookshelf. It's also one that's rich enough to make the reader wish he'd go on and wax rhapsodic about, for example, what movies he's into these days or what TV shows he's digging -- that's the mark of a truly apt critic and writer.
40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can't not like him,
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This review is from: The Polysyllabic Spree (Paperback)
I am attracted to books that discuss the author's reading and ideas about it and inevitably I get so far and wonder, why aren't I out there reading for myself instead of holding this person's hand? Not so with this, which is over far too soon. Hornby, riffing about his own reading, his life, his outlook, is holding the reader's hand.
The title would suggest a word riot, which THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE is, but it is also the name Hornby puts to the murkily protean powers that be at "The Believer Magazine" where the book was born in monthly columns. Each month's chapter begins like an entry in Bridget Jones's Diary, books bought, books actually read, then leaps off into what happened, what he actually read, what he thought about it, how it connects (and sometimes does not, like when one's football team is on the television) to life. Hornby is very funny, and also very serious. He is also full of contagious, unabashed wonder. He is quick to skewer pretension or gratuitous content. His style is highly caffeinated and raspy from nicotine, hilariously hyperbolic one moment, piercingly specific the next. He is willing to say he is wrong or doesn't know. He keeps it all about our mutual love of reading, but divulges other insights along the way, like what it's like to be the dad of an autistic child, to become a father for the third time, to try unsuccessfully to quit smoking, to be a writer amongst all the reading, the parenting and everything else going on. The proceeds of this book go to charity. How can you not like this guy?
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Spree de Bookishness!,
By John Zxerce "johnzxerce@hotmail.com" (Colorado ^^^) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Polysyllabic Spree (Paperback)
Like Hornby I end up buying more books than I read - a lot more. And every time I see those shelves of unread books I'm hit with two emotions simultaneously. First, I admire the condition and selection of my books and then I feel like a deadbeat parent who's long neglected one's children. I suppose joy and sorrow have never meshed so well in a unified whole.
And Hornby presents similar feelings not too mysterious regarding his lack of discipline in consuming his books. He writes, "I certainly 'intend' to read all of them, more or less. My 'intentions' are good. Anyway, it's my money. And I'll bet you do it, too." Additionally, I like the fact that Hornby is a discerning reader who searches for the `mesmerizing books'. These are the ones Hornby finds worthy of the hunt - those that will make you "walk into a lamp-post" while reading them. Hornby's wit and caustic humor make this an entertaining read for the bibliophile, or for anyone aspiring to own more books than days left to live.
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