Monday, November 12, 2007

The Polysyllabic Spree -- Dewey's review

Cross-posted at my blog. This was one of Athena's books.

This book really reminded me of a blog. Nick Hornby, an author whose fiction I enjoy, had a column in The Believer, called "Stuff I've Been Reading." The Polysyllabic Spree ia collection of those columns. There's a list for each month of what books he bought, which books he read (not always the same as what he bought), excerpts from books, and his musings about the books and the reading life.

There's a sequel, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt, more collected columns.

Someone put a list of all the books Hornby bought and read September 2003 to August 2004 at Wikipedia. Thanks, list-happy person!

I recommend this book for people who liked So Many Books, So Little Time and Book Lust. For me, the most interesting thing about the book was reading Hornby's comments on books I've read. I'm sure that for some people, reading this book would make the ol' wishlist grow, but I mostly skimmed when he talked about books I haven't read.

Although I liked the book, I think that rather than buying Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt, I'll just read Hornby's columns.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed this book (I put forward High Fidelity for this challenge as well) when I read it. We don't get the magazine in the UK but I will use your link to have a look online.