I recently finished a couple of different books by Nick Hornby and have come to the conclusion that Nick Hornby is our greatest living critic. I am not sure who beat him for the National Book Critics Circle Award, but they shouldn’t have.
The first book was Songbook, I actually started reading this book a couple months back but finally got around to finishing it. In this book Hornby talks about 31 different songs that mean something to him. I tried my best to find each song and listen to it while reading the essay about it, but couldn’t find them all. Hornby shows such a passion and love for songs, but is also willing to look at the work in context and from a critics perspective. My favorite song from the pack is definitly “Your Love is the place that I Come From” by Teenage Fanclub.
The second book was Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt which is the second installment of columns written by Hornby for The Believer. In each of the columns Hornby details the books he has bought and read for the month. I loved his previous collection of the columns, and this one was even better. I am very much like Hornby in that I often buy books that I don’t read for months (or years!) but still go out every weekend and buy a couple more, it is great to find someone else with the sickness.
Hornby does an incredible job of being both a critic and a true lover of music and books. The only bad thing is that I have now read all of his books (expect for some sportswriting anthologies that I might have to check out) and have to wait for more.
-James
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Oh wow, I didn’t realize ‘Housekeeping’ even existed. I loved Polysyllabic Spree. Thanks for the heads up.
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