I just finished reading a rather lovely book by Nick Hornby called the Polysyllabic Spree. This collection of essays put out by the people at The Believer traces Hornby's book purchases and book readings.
Hornby approaches his own patterns of reading and book buying with equal parts contempt, fascination, and pride. He makes us (other readers that is) feel simultaneously superior (Oh, you're only just now reading Nine Stories, how old are you again?) and inexcusably inept (Really, you read twelve books this month? How many children did you say you have again?) In other words, it makes us realize that even a published author, a man who lives and dies by the books he reads, writes, and reviews, is only human and, therefore, can only read so much.
Hornby's column works because, unlike most other "What to read" epithets, Hornby's book refuses to either adhere to or fully reject the canon. He does lie to us every now and again, whittling down the list of books bought or tossing out a cheesy paperback (by his own admission). But isn't this what we all do as readers? Hornby makes the reader comfortable in his or her own taste, his or her own personal idiosyncrasies.
So, I guess the point of this little blurb review is that most of us literary types are scared out of our fucking skins. We spend just as much time trying to seem like we've read the right books as we do reading books that we actually love. We keep notebooks filled with the titles of books that we should read and mentally note any book that has appeared in Oprah's book club in order to avoid seeming ignorant or (worse) in bad taste.
Hornby, on the other hand, loves what he loves and hates what he hates. He doesn't tell us all, but who ever really does. His book gives the reader courage to follow his or her own interests, idiosyncrasies, and bad taste. Honestly, I probably wont take that advice, I'll probably keep pulling titles out of my little black mole skein, but if I ever to do happen to read some grocery store paperback, I might not feel so bad about it.
