The Polysyllabic Spree collects fourteen installments of Nick Hornby's celebrated monthly column "Stuff I've Been Reading" from the Believer magazine.
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for his music criticism, Nick Hornby now turns his unerring gaze to books. Here, in his monthly accounts of what he's read -- along with what he bought and may one day read—Nick Hornby ably explores everything from the classic to the graphic novel, as well as poems, plays, and sports-related exposes. And if he occasionally implores a biographer for brevity, or abandons a literary work in favor of an Arsenal soccer match, then all is not lost. His warm and riotous writing, full of all the joy and surprise and despair that books bring him, reveals why we still read, even when there's soccer on TV, a pram in the hall, and a good band playing at our local bar.
"The Polysyllabic Spree is a journey as rich and varied as the world of literature itself, with Hornby perfectly cast as both tour guide and host."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"What Hornby does so beautifully here is to assume the intelligence of his readers, and to obliterate the literature/pleasure divide by acting, sensibly, as if it didn't exist. The implicit message... is that nothing that is not pleasurable has a right to be considered art. It certainly doesn't have a right to your time."
-Salon
