(by Nick Hornby)
Nick Hornby writes a column for The Believer called “Stuff I’ve Been Reading,” and periodically those columns are collected and released in book form. This is the second of these books that I’ve read, and it definitely makes want to go back to the beginning and read the ones that I missed. The pieces in this book are dated September 2017 to December 2021, and they’re mostly about books (though there’s one about the great albums of 2020) and they’re all excellent. They’re not formal reviews so much as a record of Nick Hornby’s reading life (with glimpses of his life in general and larger world events), and I love the tone of these pieces, the way they capture Hornby’s enthusiasms, the way they’re interesting and smart and generous.
I’ve read only five of the books he discusses (The Lonely City, The Line Becomes a River, Conversations with Friends, Crudo, and Normal People) but that did not detract from my enjoyment at all. Indeed, part of the fun of reading this book is the fun of discovering books I’ve never heard of that I now want to read, or being reminded of books I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t yet. I like what Hornby shares about his approach to reading, too, a lot of which resonates with me. He talks about having decided, at some point, to start reading “only books that looked as though they were going to serve my needs and tastes as a reader”; he talks about “the hundreds of unread books” he owns (and also includes a list of books he’s bought recently at the start of every column); he talks about looking on his shelves for the right book to read next, “without having a clue what that book should be about, what tone it should have, how many pages it should be, whether the words should rhyme, what language it should be in.” I love how he describes the delight of reading as a hobby: “I can’t wait to start whatever it is I’m reading next, and finishing it, and starting the book after that. And so on, and on.” In short: this book is a delight.
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