The full title of this anthology of personal essays is: More Baths Less Talking: Notes from the Reading Life of a Celebrated Author Locked in Battle with Football, Family, and Time Itself. I previously loved the first two installments, but for some reason, my library does have the third: Shakespeare wrote for Money. In any case, I love this series and wish I could a subscription to The Believer magazine just to read Hornby muse about reading every month.

Hornby is the kind of author you’d like to go to the pub with, but instead of just talking about football, you also talk about novels and interesting works of deeply researched non fiction. Hornby and I seem to share a love of not only literature, but also appreciation for non-fiction works focusing on social history and society. I find he writes quite eloquently about books, but not in a pompous way or in the conventional book critic way. He usually has a good thing to say about any book and we’re the same kind of reviewer. No matter how bad a book is, I try my best to find some silver lining in it and the time I spent with it.

I think Hornby’s series is great for all of us who enjoy reading and want to incorporate it in our lives. He offers experiences that many readers can relate to such as:

“Surely we all occasionally buy books because of a daydream we’re having–a little fantasy abut the people we might turn into one day, when our lives are different quieter, more introspective, and when all the urgent reading, whatever that might be, has been done.” (p 27)

That just explained my whole collection of cookbooks. Not to mention all those Pulitzer/Bookers I buy from book fairs.

I also really like personal essays too so I will keep reading these books as long as Hornby keeps producing the column for the Believer magazine. Recommended if you like reading about reading.

I must note that I was sleep deprived and ill when I read this book so I didn’t have the most concentration, but it was surprisingly light reading even when some of the books he read were not.

Read December 10-11, 2012.