Posts tagged as "nick hornby"
Hi! Just discovered your blog via planetickets and I think it's AWESOME. I love your choice of blog title(Nick Hornby fan here)! I named my highschool newspaper column the same thing. Looking around your recent posts, I can definitively say that you have excellent taste in books. :D
~ dropped
Why, good morning to you too, fellow Nick Horby fan. :)
I had the good fortune of spotting a slightly dog-eared but really cheap copy of the very rare (at least in this side of the planet) The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, the definitive anthology of Hornby’s essays and reviews in his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column in The Believer, which were previously published as three separate volumes, namely The Polysyllabic Spree, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt, and Shakespeare Wrote for Money, in one of the bargain bins of one of the bookstores that I frequent. And while I admit that Hornby’s articles are nowhere near as well-written or as important as, say, Martin Amis’s in his own collection, The War Against Cliché, I quote myself from nine months ago: “I’d have to be the dumbest person in the world not to buy it right then and there.”
Far more than being deeply insightful, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree was consistently fun to read, and I dare say those descriptions, former and latter both, are what I’d like the anthology’s namesake book blog, that is to say, this blog, to arrive at being someday.
P.S. I’ve also configured the URL http://www.thepolysyllabicspree.com to redirect to this blog, in case anyone’s interested in, you know, just knowing about it.
P.P.S. Everyone ought to follow Zet aka planetickets ‘cause she is awesome. And I’m not just saying that.
1 July 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/756093790
Paranoid Android
El Ten Eleven
These Promises Are Being Videotaped (2008)
I was away from this blog for well over a month, during which time I was busy rerouting lines and surface patterns on printed circuit boards that end up in Brazilian motorists’ dashboards, reviewing and beta-testing iPhone apps to supplement my scant income, contributing to a kick-ass film blog, and having virtually no life outside the little circle at the center of which is me and my trusty computer.
I’m well aware that I need to do something with that last bit if I still possess at least an iota of concern over my mental and emotional health (I’m glad to report that I do.) but, alas, I can’t fully commit to such a potentially arduous undertaking at the moment. For now I shall be content with doing something that is far less demanding but is, in my mind, no less rewarding: restoring this godforsaken blog to its former glory, if any.
Prior to publishing my first blog post in ages, I thought a theme overhaul was in order. So I had my ambitious, on-its-way-to-recovery blog go under the respective knives of Web interface surgeons Jonathan Moore and Matthew Buchanan, whose superb Solaris theme I ended up using.
Also, I thought a change of blog title was called for. I initially opted for Paranoid Android, which is a reference to Marvin, the sarcastically fluent and pessimistically disposed robot in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and incidentally is in keeping with the blog’s previous title, Dreams of Electric Sheep, but seeing that paranoidandroid both as a Tumblr username and a top-level domain name was already taken, I had to think of something else.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to think and look any further than my bedside table, where several books I wanted to be always within reach were stacked. There, between The Elements of Style and The Catcher in the Rye, was The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of Nick Hornby’s “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns that he used to write for The Believer. Seeing that thepolysyllabicspree both as a Tumblr username and a top-level domain name was available and because I am admittedly given to both bibliophilia and sesquipedalianism, this blog was reborn thus: The Polysyllabic Spree.
I sure hope I get to post as often and write as many syllables as I’d like this time around or all that theme exclusivity and domain name forwarding will be all for nothing.
My next self-assignment: Step outside the circle, cease being paranoid, and get a life.
5 May 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/573324685
Of Mice and Men, the acclaimed short novel by John Steinbeck, tells the unforgettable and heartbreaking tale of a pair of Californian bindlestiffs during the Great Depression. George Milton is short but street smart and strong-willed, whereas his constant companion, Lennie Small, is ironically large and strong but mentally deficient. Together they form a symbiotic tandem, looking out for each other and striving to save up for their American dream. They wish to one day own a place of their own, where George can just sit back and not worry about anything, while Lennie can satisfy his childlike compulsion for soft things by tending to some rabbits in a field of alfalfa. But the already bumpy road to their dream homestead is suddenly blocked when, not long after they finally find a ranch to work in, their boss’s attractive, coquettish daughter-in-law gets involved with the simpleminded Lennie, prompting George to act quickly to protect himself and his friend.
“Such a perfect book,” said popular British author and Believer critic Nick Hornby about Of Mice and Men. I couldn’t agree more. There’s a reason the novella is called a classic, and that reason is genius.
15 November 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/243722489
I would never attempt to dissuade anyone from reading a book. But please, if you’re reading a book that’s killing you, put it down and read something else, just as you would reach for the remote if you weren’t enjoying a TV programme. Your failure to enjoy a highly rated novel doesn’t mean you’re dim — you may find that Graham Greene is more to your taste, or Stephen Hawking, or Iris Murdoch, or Ian Rankin. Dickens, Stephen King, whoever. It doesn’t matter. All I know is that you can get very little from a book that is making you weep with the effort of reading it. You won’t remember it, and you’ll learn nothing from it, and you’ll be less likely to choose a book over Big Brother next time you have a choice.
~
Nick Hornby, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (currently reading, alongside Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan)
Three new books arrived in the mail yesterday.
I looked far and wide for these books, but the three major bookstore chains in the country were more or less a failure in handing me any and all of the three. So, it wasn’t long before I finally turned to the Internet and its profusion of online stores. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and eBay, were among my first destinations, but, alas, the price of international shipping was a lot higher than the price of the goods themselves. I was crestfallen.
Then, last Sunday, as a result of Googling for an available copy of another book I’ve been dying to lay my hands on, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, I stumbled upon a local online specialty bookstore called Avalon.ph. I remembered the name of the Web site from a couple of years ago, when it provided a copy of Baudolino by Umberto Eco to be given away in a radio contest, which I gladly won. Unfortunately, the store had no copy of House of Leaves available, at least one that wasn’t prohibitively priced (a signed copy was available, but it came with a really hefty price tag). Fortunately, though, three of the books on my mental wishlist were in stock and inexpensive. I placed my order, convulsively.
Now, I have three more titles, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, to add to my unfathomably long queue of books to read before I die. Decidedly more than enough to keep me uninterested in Big Brother.
30 September 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/200998112
© 2009-2010
Written by Aldrin Calimlim
Published by Tumblr, Inc.
