24. Housekeeping v. The Dirt

By Nick Hornby (153 pp)

This is another collection of columns from The Believer. I read the first collection, The Polysyllabic Spree in 2005. Each month Hornby makes a list of the books he's purchased and then the books he's read and writes about it. I'm a huge Hornby fan and loved this book although there are a few columns where he sounds like a man filling up space, like he'd woken up that morning and thought: Shit, my column is due today and I have an Arsenal match to watch. There's also the unfortunate column where he's mortified to find himself buying and unable to get through a sci-fi book.  But most of the time he manages to make books I've never heard of sound too interesting to miss and several times I found myself jotting down a title so I could look for it. Later I discarded those because I already have so many books to read.