Product Description

In his monthly accounts of what he's read – along with what he may one day read – Nick Hornby brilliantly explores everything from the classic to the graphic novel, as well as poems, plays, sports books and other kinds of non-fiction. If he occasionally implores a biographer for brevity, or abandons a literary work in favour of an Arsenal match, then all is not lost. His writing, full of all the joy and surprise and despair that books bring him, reveals why we still read, even when there's football on TV, a pram in the hall or a good band playing at our local pub.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26043 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Nick Hornby is the bestselling author of High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to be Good and A Long Way Down (shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award), as well as the non-fiction Fever Pitch and 31 Songs. He is the recipient of the E.M. Forster Award, the W.H. Smith Award for Fiction and the Writers' Writer Award at the Orange International Writers' Festival. He lives in Highbury, North London.

Customer Reviews

Light reading
This is a slim volume collecting essays Nick Hornby wrote from Dave Eggers's magazine the Believer. In these essays, produced monthly, Hornby chronicles his reading, telling us about books he's enjoyed and books he's struggled with, keeping a detailed record of what he's bought and what he's read (not always the same), and reflecting on the way life and reading interrelate. It's a fairly slight book, but there are some characteristically neat observations, and it's touched with Hornby's usual humanity. To me this is basically a bathroom book - something to read in five-page chunks - and it shouldn't be seen as either a literary manifesto or an important extension of Hornby's oeuvre. But it has made me check out writers I either wouldn't otherwise have read or hadn't even heard of, and that's always a pleasure.

The fine print
I read through this book at my usual pace, walking the dog , on the train to work , waiting in the pub for friends, in the bath, waiting for pizza, basically the usual haunts of the book addict. This book articulated my relationship with books from the tendancy to over buy books given the constraints on my time to read them, to my hatred for plot-divulging revues (the irony isnt lost). Hornby's key critical capabilities are boosted by the limitations put on him by the editors of the magazine he writes the column for,i.e. no direct criticism of the writer or writing allowed. This makes for a really wonderful discourse on his relationship with the books he reads and his enthusiasm for the books he chooses to read is infectious. Beyond this though the humour is what makes this book special. I think even if you took away my constant empathy with the author (I walked around nodding my head as I walked into lamposts) the humour alone would have kept me captivated. Ironically enough the first lesson of the book is that life is too short to read books that you dont like , put them down, move on - a great piece of advice that I intend to keep with. However I must say the first pages of this book took a while to get going while the rapport and standing jokes matured. If I had followed the advice in that first chapter I would have missed out on one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. Dont be put off by the fact that it is a book of articles (this was almost enough to turn me away from the start), but being a fan of the author's novels I decided to give it a go, absolutely no regrets.

There's no cure for the Polysyllabic Spree....
Put simply this is about the travails of a book addict writing about his 'addiction' for an American magazine, and emerging from the task with an understanding about the nature of buying, reading and criticizing books. This is very sharp and snappy stuff and makes you realize just how smart the ever humble Nick Hornby is.
One of the other great things about 'The Spree' of course is that it justifies every book addict's addiction and as such will act as a key piece of evidence when your book shelves finally collapse onto some poor soul and you need to defend yourself in a Tort case. Great stuff.