Now It Must Be Told

I, Zil McZillerson, read a Nick Hornby book last night before/instead of going to a party. And I liked it. (And it wasn't even a real book, it was The Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of columns about books he's purchased and books he's read written for The Believer, which, though it calls itself a magazine, is puzzlingly lacking in the features I think magazines must have: photo essays on how stars are just like us, for example, or centerfold photos of Appleheaded Siamese. [Don't you judge me.]) (And while we're at the confessions, let me say that I have actually never read any of Hornby's other books, and I'm just guessing at what kind of author he is based on the many fine movies inspired by those books. I said, don't judge me.)
So why did I like it? In true Hornby spirit (at least as far as I know from what John Cusack did in High Fidelity) let me explain by list.

1. Getting me to like the book involved a high degree of difficulty. First, there is the taint of McSweeney's on it--an organization I semi-irrationally but nevertheless wholeheartedly abhor. I helped Hornby out by skipping all the parts of the essays that discuss the McSweeney's collective in allegedly humorous ways. Second, someone had the dopey idea of putting excerpts from books that he talks about in between the columns to pad the book out. I can't imagine who in the world gets inspired to read, say, The Old Curiosity Shop this way. If you weren't already planning to read it, 3 pages in a pamphlet produced by aging hipsters ain't going to do it.
2. The idea of this book is basically the founding principle of "It's A Book Club" as well--that most people who love books and have disposable income own many, many more books than they are ever going to read, which does not stop them from buying still more books at every opportunity. Though Hornby appears to have a lot more bookshelf space that I do.
3. He and I like a lot of the same books, and he reminded me of some books I'd read and enjoyed and then forgotten about, like Adrian LeBlanc's Random Family, which I now vaguely remember getting from the library and reading just after OlderKid was born. (I pause to marvel at my energy back then.) Also, he likes Moneyball, and I'm so excited about the start of spring training that I'll smile benevolently on anyone who even uses the letter "A," let alone writes excitedly about Billy Beane.
4. [Kind of a corollary of 3]. Dickens is his favorite author. While trying to walk YoungerKid to sleep, I spent a long time working out a theory about how people are either Dickens people or (George) Eliot people and I, as my cell phone clearly has been trying to tell me, am a Dickens person. I had to reject this theory as a) reductive and b) possibly the nerdiest thing I've ever thought about. And yet--if you love Dickens, you love excess, eccentricity, black humor, maudlin sentiment, and people named Vholes, and those are all good things in my book. (Yes, I recognize that Dickens also has some less attractive qualities. See the fourth chapter of my forthcoming monograph.)
5. The book made me laugh out loud at least three times, and that was twice more than I did at the party I went to afterwards. (Which really just proves that I shouldn't go out any more because I'm a bitter old teetotaler, but anyway.)

Last Night's Read Alouds: When Sophie Gets Angry--Really, Really Angry..., Hansel and Gretel, The Two Bad Mice, Ferdinand.