The Polysyllabic Spree

…I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. My music is me, too, of course – but as I only really like rock and roll and its mutations, huge chunks of me – my rarely examined operatic streak for example – are unrepresented in my CD collection. And I don’t have the wall space or the money for all the art I would want and my house is a shabby mess, ruined by children…but with each purchase year and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. (pg. 125)

In September 2003, Nick Hornby began writing a monthly column for Believer Magazine, “Stuff I have been Reading”. The column chronicles Hornby’s reading life – books read as well as books purchased. The Polysyllabic Spree is a collection of the first fifteen months of Hornby’s musings on reading, life, and the fine sport of English Football interspersed with excerpts of some of what Hornby is reading such as a long passage from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Hornby is the author of a highly regarded memoir, Fever Pitch, about his fanatical obsession with the Arsenal Football Club. He also has a number of novels (including High Fidelity) and other non-fiction writing to his name. He followed up Polysyllabic Spree with two other collections and some of his columns are online at the Believer’s website but half the fun of reading the columns comes from the things that carry over month to month.

This book was just plain fun to read. Hornby is varied in his reading taste: classics, biography, letters, modern fiction, and non-fiction as well. I have not heard of much of what he was reading which made me wonder what exactly I was doing in 2004 (it was fairly non-reading year for me) and I have looked a few of the books up to add to my list. It was also really nice to see someone reading biographies and letters – an area woefully neglected these days.

Most of the fun comes from reading a really good writer talk about reading. He gets it – the sheer pleasure of reading a passage of good writing, the satisfaction of reading a book that really speaks to you, “ …in other words, it wasn’t just up my street; it was actually knocking at my front door and peering through the letterbox to see if I was in.” (pg. 24) Hornby also talks of how one book leads to another, as well as the act of writing and the creative life. He even has moving passages about raising autistic children.

He has several passages about the contrast between the modern writing trend of leanness and classics with their depth and breath which Hornby describes as “books teeming with exuberance and energy and life and comedy.”(pg. 75) He really made me reflect on my own reading because tend to read and enjoy those modern lean and mean novels and yet three of my all time favorite books I have ever read are Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, and War and Peace. Perhaps I need to make more room in my life for Henry James.

Hornby also writes about the experience of falling out of love with a book, that jolting moment when it just isn’t working anymore, that moment when “suddenly I was no longer under the skin of the book the way I had been; I was on the outside looking in.” (pg. 96) He even writes about the panic you feel when, not withstanding the enormous number of unread books at home, when you think, for what ever reason, that you may not be able to purchase a new book for a long time. I have had the same feeling of panic when the stack coming in from the library slows down – what would I do?

If you are a reader who enjoys reading about books and the act of reading, then look for the Polysyllabic Spree. Because it is a collection of magazine columns – it is a quick read perfect for those “just before bed” reading times or even for keeping in the car for when you have a small amount of waiting time and want something short to read.

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