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The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby: A review that’s admittedly too first-person

Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic Flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. See? I mean, I don't know how scientific this is, but it feels like the novels are walking it. You might get the occasional exception — Blonde on Blonde might mash up The Old Curiosity Shop, say, and I wouldn't give much for Pale Fire's chances against Citizen Kane. And every now and then you'd get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I'm still backing literature twenty-nine times out of thirty.

"I know you don't really like Nick Hornby too much," my boyfriend said when he handed me The Polysyllabic Spree. "But I hope you like this one."

"I don't like Nick Hornby?"

"Yeah, you said he was 'too first person.'"

"Oh, that's right."

Significant others have a funny way of reminding you of things you've totally forgotten. The Polysyllabic Spree was everything I was trying to avoid: it wasn't a novel per se, but a collection of columns written by an author I hadn't really learned to like after two novels (High Fidelity and 31 Songs). On top of it all, it was a book that tackled the pleasures of reading (or, as the blurb on the cover described it, "A hilarious and true account of one man's struggle with the monthly tide of the books he's bought and the books he's been meaning to read."). These were all things I've never really encountered before, simply because I didn't think I'd like them.

Surprisingly, reading a book about a famous author reading books was an enjoyable experience. Nick Hornby manages to avoid making you feel alienated, even as he talks about his very subjective reactions and reading experiences. For example, he explains how a single wrong sentence can singlehandedly make a book seem less genuine, or how other things can so easily get in the way of reading (like football, or an addition to the family).

In the past, I would've been quick to label these as "too-first-person" grievances. Plus, the vast majority of these books he mentioned were ones I hadn't even heard of before, and he drops cultural references on almost every page, only a handful of which I recognized. (He's so British.) But the magic of The Polysyllabic Spree lies in Hornby's ability to draw you in and find out what you (the reader) and the author have in common. Anybody who's ever loved reading, for one, will smile at Hornby's mention that the true book lover compulsively buys books even as he has dozens waiting to be read, or when he quips that all Amazon.com reviewers are idiots.

Basically, reading The Polysyllabic Spree felt like having a chat with Nick Hornby himself. I have no idea what the man looks like, but I had no trouble picturing him lighting a cigarette and relating how he offered Kurt Vonnegut a light once, or how he thinks Dickens is one of the greatest novelists to have ever existed. Perhaps the light and jovial tone of the book is also its downfall: like many conversations with truly engaging people, it just leaves one wanting for more.