However I have to say, I was a little disappointed by this book, simply because he kept to the same formula and never grew or evolved as a reader or writer.

As stated in a previous What I Think about When I’m Not Blogging post, this has inspired me to write more personal essays. What I thought was interesting is the fact that Nick Hornby took a very simple formula and worked within the confines of it successfully. This is followed by an essay talking about these books and future reading plans, often between 500 to 2000 words. However due to The Believers guidelines all books he hated must be listed as untitled. Each article follows the same basic format, first listing books he bought that month, and then the books he read. It started in 2003 and releases nine issues a year this book takes Hornsby’s column from September 2003 to mid-2006. In fact, The Believer is a literary magazine created by Dave Eggers and part of the McSweeney’s company it also focuses on other forms of the arts and general culture. Hornby often describes the works of The Believer in this way “all dressed in white robes and smiling maniacally, sort of like a literary equivalent of The Polyphonic Spree.” The title is a reference to the Dallas choral rock band The Polyphonic Spree, a group with over twenty members in it. titles from his column, The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. The Complete Polysyllabic Spree is the combination of two U.S. While Nick Hornby is best known for his fiction that includes books like High Fidelity and About a Boy, some maybe familiar with his column in The Believer called Stuff I’ve Been Reading. Title: The Complete Polysyllabic Spree ( Goodreads)īuy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby