Alas, this is the third and final collection from Nick Hornby's "Stuff I've Been Reading" column in The Believer magazine. The first two were The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. The Dirt. They are inspiring, hilarious and wonderful ruminations on life as a reader. He continues the "Books Bought" and "Books Read" list that open each section (and of course almost never match).
Best quote from this one:
"The annoying thing about reading is that you can never get the job done."
And when mentioning one of those "best books you must read" lists he says, "...but reading begets reading--that's the point of it, surely?--and anybody who never deviates from a set list of books is intellectually dead anyway."
It's even more distressing that he's ended this column because he recently wrote a good YA novel and found out there were more of these kind of books out the in the world and only just now started noticing and writing about the likes of Skellig, Weetzie Bat, and Holes. Sigh.
The column will be missed, but now I at least have time to catch up on my reading...
