I’ve just finished Housekeeping vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby. A book on reading bought ages ago. It is the second book of a series of three. A collection of articles written for The Believer 2003 (?) to 2006.
Despite Hornby’s persistent mentions of the Polysyllabic Spree – the [insert figure here] people, dressed in white robes when not running around naked who ran The Believer during this time and gave Hornby plenty of trouble over his articles – I failed to recognize that I’d missed the first book. Or that that there was a first book at all until I came to the end of this second book. I, of course, immediately ordered the Polysyllabic Spree from an Amazon seller for one penny and 3.99 in shipping. Hornby inadvertently taught me all about the importance of reading the conditions descriptions carefully, while still assuming the book will come tattered.
This reading is the first reading I, and my first adviser, assigned to me. An assignment? Hardly. Finishing a book I’ve been meaning to read for years is not an assignment. I even started from the beginning and the read the essays I’d already read because they were so important the first time I read that I forgot every word. No, really, they are important. Someday I want to do what he does and the only way to do it is to read everything. Everything he’s done (which I basically have), everything everyone like him has done, everything everyone he suggests reading has done (which is why this was a great place to start. A reading list built in) and all the magazines and newspapers and memoirs they all write.
I’m sure Hornby would be surprised to know, as was I, that he is my favorite writer. (I think it’s because his essays are self-deprecating and dry, not pretentious, I-know-everything like Chuck Klosterman’s – the other writer I’ve spent a lot of ‘time’ with). I didn’t realize he was my favorite writer until my adviser, when suggesting things to read at my request, mentioned his name. ‘I LOVE Nick Hornby. Of course!’ was my response and I remembered that I caught up on his catalog (and have a serious craving to read High Fidelity again, I watched the movie tonight, but it just didn’t do the trick) the autumn out of my OTHER master’s program. For the first time I had to wait for a book to come out. Juliet, Naked hadn’t been published when I finished. (I immediately purchased it upon entering the UK when I came for a long visit in the summer of 2010. Or, at least, nearly immediately. I may have forgotten about it from the winter until I saw it in one of my favorite independents in Bath.)
I’ve spent so much time in school reading assigned work I’d very nearly forgotten how to read for fun, and very definitely had little time to seek out work that I enjoyed (something I now envy about my mother’s collection of romance novels. She never sacrifices enjoyment in reading). Hornby talks about this in the introduction to Housekeeping and I know I’ve discussed this introduction on one blog or another in the past, but reading should be fun. That’s the simple summary, really. Just that. And my miniatures professor said to us to read like writers, ‘If you get bored, stop reading.’
I have a feeling that this program will not stifle my reading. I just wonder when I’m going to get the time to read everything I like.
libbywalkup
