About a Boy - Nick Hornby

Not even 50p. This was actually 30p from the Barbican Library overstock shelves. Now, I do realize that, much like David Nicholls a decade later, Nick Hornby isn’t exactly great literature, but it’s very well written and funny, and its cultural pop references are still better than those of plenty of bestsellers. So go ahead, and look down on me for enjoying a read like this every once in a while.

For once I actually had a book that I could pick-up on a short train journey (not that I use trains often – I just happened to do a bit of parkrun tourism when I was reading About a Boy), while waiting in line at the post office and, erm, on the toilet.

And it was great.

Having watched the movie, most of the gags and jokes were unsurprising (that said, I did still giggle aloud a few times – the dead duck remains priceless) but the ending was much more meaningful than I expected (not that seeing Hugh Grant accompany Marcus’s version of Killing Me Softly isn’t meaningful). And reading about my old neighbourhood always makes me feel all warm inside.

So yeah – Great literature? Not even remotely. Great read? Absolutely. 

Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby

I had this book for years, read bits and pieces of it, and know the movie by heart, but I wanted to read it cover to cover at a time in which I was watching some hard-nosed yet inspirational football, and that’s exactly what’s happening with Italy at the Euros right now (that is, until Germany just totally destroys us on Saturday).

The book is undoubtedly well-written and humorous, and so many of the points that Hornby makes clearly echo with most football fans (even people who, like me, have been to the stadium only a few times). I loved reading of his mom leaving him post-it notes with the results of late games when he was a kid (my dad did the same with me, and I still remember his Juventus-Torino 5-0 with a Vialli hat-trick and goals by Ferrara and Ravanelli) and finding out that Attilio Lombardo was indeed also famous in England for his hairline (or lack thereof) more than for his – absolutely unquestionable – skills.

If only there was an actual plot (like there is in the movie) to join the anecdotes together, this would be an excellent novel (well, maybe that’s a stretch), but instead it just remains, erm, anecdotal – and I don’t really love this sort of books as more often than not they’re just way too easy to read and relate to (which is slightly counterintuitive, I do realize). And as a Juve supporter, I suffered every time Hornby described a hooligan charge in the 70’s and early 80’s, because I knew  that at some point it would end up with the Heysel disaster…