As far as I remember (and I really can’t be bothered to check) this is the first time that I’ve reviewed a book here in this hallowed blogospace of mine. You would have thought that I could have waited until I read something much more weighty and impressive, but then I’d probably have been waiting for a damn long time, since I rarely finish the weighty and impressive ones. I like to think that I left behind writing extensively about books that I haven’t read when I left university.

I almost feel like apologising for reading and reviewing a Nick Hornby book. This is because I am British, and reviewing a book that doesn’t have a review from somewhere like the TLS plastered on its front is almost like admitting defeat. Still, who cares? I really enjoy Hornby’s writing. He approaches most things in the same way I do - with a geekiness clasped in one hand, and a bit of passion and love in the other. Not football, though, he can keep that.

The Polysyllabic Spree are the pseudo-fictional editors of the Believer magazine, for which these columns were originally written. Each month he makes a list of the books that he’s bought, and an often wildly different list of the books that he’s read, and then writes about them. Except that the Spree insist that he’s nice about all of the writers, meaning that some of the books and writers don’t get mentioned by name. This means that you can spend some time guessing which particular book got that drubbing. Having read almost none of the books in question, I had absolutely no clue, but if you read a lot more books than me, then you might. I wouldn’t know.

There are a couple of things that really grabbed me in the essays. One is the fact that Hornby finds and writes about a lot of books that I would now really like to read because they sound wonderful. He points out early on that one can, essentially, exhaust films and music, but even reading the best novels of the last six months is nigh-on impossible. For someone who reads as slowly and sporadically as myself, this is even more true. Secondly, he has a healthy disregard for the ‘literary’ novel, which made me feel much better about the fact that I, too, generally find the things excruciatingly dull. People who make me feel less embarrassed about my ignorance are good, good people.

Hornby has a great, simple but engrossing writing style, and reminded me that one is actually supposed to enjoy the process of reading. You can’t really thank someone enough for that.