Customer Reviews

The Polysyllabic Spree

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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.

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?

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.

Nick Hornby's "The Polysyllabic Spree" is an entertaining collection of essays about why Hornby buys so many books, reads some of them, and fails to read or finish others. Hornby gives his "varnished" opinion about what he has read. Why? It is part of the creed of "The Believer," the publication for which he writes, that he is not allowed to be too snarky. Therefore, he cannot give his unvarnished opinion lest he be called to task, or even worse, fired. This is an intensely personal book that feels as if Hornby is sitting on our living room couch and conversing with us. It is hilarious, thoughtful, and delightfully tongue-in-cheek.

"The Polysyllabic Spree" is a slim book that you can knock off in a day. The essays are divided by month. In each chapter, Hornby lists the books he has purchased and completed that month. He then proceeds to explain his choices and gives a quick critique of what he has read. In a few cases, Hornby includes excerpts from his readings. To say that his literary tastes are eclectic is a huge understatement. He includes not only fiction and poetry, but also a book about the economics of putting together a winning baseball team, a sociological study of two women living in the Bronx, a best-seller about punctuation, and a book about how to quit smoking.

Hornby gives the reader a glimpse into his family life, as well; he describes the ups and downs of living with an autistic son. (He includes several books about autism in his readings.) Although I did not entirely agree with his criticism of Zoe Heller's "What was She Thinking?" or Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," I was in total agreement with Hornby on Dennis Lehane's "Mystic River," which he and I both adored. Whether or not you and Hornby are on the same page as far as literary criticism is concerned, if you are a bibliophile, you'll most likely find something in this book to amuse or divert you. As an added incentive, all proceeds of the book go to two worthy charities.

Okay, until the end of January, (I know, only a few more days) you can subscribe to the totally hip literary zine, The Believer, and get a copy of The Polysyllabic Spree for free. The deal of the century! I devoured my free copy of TPS last night. Hornby's discussion of David Copperfield is not to be missed (there is still something new to be said about Dickens). Like many readers, I keep lists of books read and unread and love dishing here and elsewhere about their power, relevance, and lack thereof. I wish more of us (Amazonians) were as entertaining as Hornby. I'm assuming this column will continue in The Believer, so if you like TPS, you'll have to subscribe to The Believer anyway. What fun!

Only because Hornby loathes Amazon reviewers, even the ones who write positive reviews. He doesn't say why, just hates 'em. Too bad. I won't hold it against him.

I love the idea for Polysyllabic Spree: list the books you've bought or borrowed in the past month, separately list the books you've read, then discuss. Nick Hornby writes a column for the San Francisco magazine The Believer (which I had been unaware of until reading Hornby's book) in which he does just that. The book compiles fourteen months worth of columns.

The columns read like a blog, with Hornby going off on tangents often, as you do when you talk about books. He doesn't really review many of the books he's read, because The Believer has strict rules against saying anything bad about a book. Their philosophy is that there are plenty of publications that will tell you about bad books and they want to use their space to let you know only about good books. So if Hornby buys or reads a book he doesn't like, he lists it without title as "unnamed literary novel" or "unnamed work of non-fiction." Even with this rather significant restriction, it's fun to read and compare Hornby's opinions with your own and to get suggestions for more books to read. The tangents are good too, especially those about his brother-in-law, Robert Harris (author of Pompeii, Fatherland, Enigma).

The title is apparently a play on the name of a "happy music" symphonic pop band from Dallas called The Polyphonic Spree.

Nick Hornby is the author of High Fidelity (yes, it was made into a movie with John Cusack) and About a Boy) (made into a movie with Hugh Grant), How to Be Good, and his newest book, A Long Way Down.

The Polysyllabic Spree is a collection of Hornby's essays written about his book purchases and reading over a period of 14 months (from September 2003 to November 2004) for The Believer, one of those intensely quirky literate magazines based in New York. You know the kind, printed on matte paper, 4- color, with line drawing illustrations.

This is some of the most hysterically funny writing about books and reading I have ever read. Hornby's heroic struggle with Wilkie Collins' No Name in his Dec. 2003-Jan. 2004 column is described in great detail. He loved the first 200 pages, and based upon that, had recommended it in a previous column. However, he was totally unprepared for the next 418 pages. No Name was one of those Dickens-era serialized novels, and I guess Collins was reluctant to end it.

Hornby found it hard to feel sympathy for a heroine who might just have to go out and work--gasp! as a governess or something else equally horrible, if her evil relatives do succeed in stealing her inheritance. "Wilkie would point out that I unwisely attempted to read the second half of No Name during a trip to L.A. Has anyone ever attempted a Victorian novel in Los Angeles, and if so, why?" says Hornby.

Hornby's journey with books in The Polysyllabic Spree is one of the discoveries of unusually wonderful books, and he includes a few excerpts in this volume.

Nick Hornby, the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, among other novels, began writing his monthly column "Stuff I've Been Reading" for Believer magazine in September of 2003. Fourteen of Hornby's essays are collected here in The Polysyllabic Spree. Each is prefaced by lists of the books the author read and purchased in the month preceding the column's appearance: Hornby, who reads a lot of books and buys even more, is admirably comfortable with populating his shelves with books he is unlikely ever to get to.

In his column Hornby discusses what he's read during the month, how he came to read or buy the books he did, how the books under discussion relate to one another. In the course of writing about his reading life Hornby hits on any number of topics: the dampening effect of parenthood on one's reading; his experience watching an unwitting stranger read his book poolside; Anton Chekhov's unfortunate use of sappy endearments--"little ginger-haired doggie," "my dearest chaffinch"--in letters to his wife ("For god's sake, pull yourself together, man! You're a major cultural figure!"); the surprising similarity between reading and, well, being the leader of the free world:

"Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path."

Hornby's tone in his essays is conversational, his observations often witty. The book is most interesting, inevitably, when Hornby's reading life intersects with one's own, but familiarity with the books he discusses is not necessary to one's enjoyment. (I fear I've read regrettably few of the books on his lists.) One comes away from The Polysyllabic Spree liking Hornby and appreciating his regular-guy take on the highbrow world of letters.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Brief and breezy, an easy hour-and-a-half read, "Polysyllabic Spree" collects a series of articles Hornby wrote for The Believer over the last 12 months (shockingly for the publication date, the last month published is Nov. 2004) detailing the wealth of books he's purchased each month as well as which ones he actually gets around to reading. From the beginning it's obvious that Nick is - not so much a collector, his purchases are admittedly random - but more of a packrat. He gleefully and unapologetically admits to buying more books than he can possibly read, and has no qualms in confessing that some of the books he has no plans of ever reading.

Chart browsers will find a number of popular literary smashes over the last year (ie. Johnathon Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude") as well as one timeless classic ("David Copperfield", which takes him two months to get through) and a number of books that the author has had recommended or, more often than not, been sent gallies of through the mail via contacts in the industry.

Ultimately, "Polysyllabic Spree" offers virtually no new insight into any of these books (not that he bothered to finish about half of them). The few instances where he has anything of merit to say about the works he quickly summarizes his opinion and then refers the reader to longer, more detailed reviews he's written for other publications. So you get the idea pretty early that this book is more about the _process_ of reading than what it is a person is reading themselves. After all, how many of us have thrown a 150-page "easy read" into the reading list just to beef up one's perceived literary absorption for that month? All in all, that seems to be the point of "Polysyllabic Spree": a quick evening's read for fans of both Nick Hornby and just the overall process of being a bookworm. Probably edges closer to a 3.5 rating just due to it's relative lack of ambition (I've never read the article Norman Mailer wrote about the time he sat down and read every book in the NY Times bestseller list, but I have no doubt "..Spree" is pretty lightweight in comparison). Nonetheless, like fellow contemporary Chuck Palahniuk, whose "Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk Through Portland, OR" is a vanity project more or less along these same lines, Hornby is attracting a sort of cult of personality who is interested in what he has to say on certain matters. For those who are disappointed in "Polysyllabic Spree" because of it's lack of depth, I'd recommend "The War Against Cliche" by Martin Amis, which covers both a wealth of book reviews as well as other non-fiction essays.

If you love reading, you'll enjoy Hornby's jaunt through his booklist. I could totally identify with his "books bought" vs. "books read" problem ... I share the same condition. Hornby is a clever, witty writer. This makes a good gift. The only problem -- it made me want to read Believer magazine, the periodical these essays come from, and it's a FREAKING expensive mag!