On the list of People I'd Like To Meet/People Who Are So Much More Talented Than Me That They Make Me Want to Cry, Nick Hornby ranks very highly.
That list is pretty long, by the way. I'm not going to tell you everyone who's on it. But I can no longer carry it around with me. There are a lot of talented people out there, and I'd like to meet most of them.
Nick Hornby has written many many books, and I've read most of them except for Fever Pitch, which I would have read but then they made it into a movie starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, and now if I read it I'm going to picture Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore as the characters in the book, and Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore are very high up on the list of People Who Make Me Not Want To Picture Them As Characters In The Books I'm Reading.
The books I have read by Nick Hornby are "How To Be Good," "About A Boy," "Slam" and "A Long Way Down." Which, as I look over his website, I see amounts to 4 of the 9 books he's written, which makes me sound like I was lying when I said I read most of them. But one of those books, as I look more closely at his website, is a short story anthology. Another was just released and is a collection of essays he wrote about what he's been reading, which I would not be inclined to buy or read, except that it's by Nick Hornby, so it might be very good. But that means that I've read 4 of 8 books he's written, and 4 of the 5 novels he's written, so I'm going to go ahead and say that I was being truthful when I said "I've read most of them."
Of the books by Nick Hornby that I've actually read, while all are very good, the book A Long Way Down stands way way above all the others, and is The Best Book To Read In One Sitting.
I very rarely read a book quickly anymore. For one thing,
I'm far too busy. For another, I spend a lot of time playing "Cloverfield" with the Babies! (That's pretty much my chief contribution in their life. Sweetie does all kinds of great things for them. I play "Cloverfield" and read them their Pop-Up books.) Gone are the days when I would take out a stack of books from the library and read them all in two weeks.
Business aside, there's another reason I don't read quickly anymore. With less time to read, I'm more choosy about what I read, which is a good thing because I read a lot less crummy books. Nothing is worse than a crummy book. It's a waste of weeks of my time and imagination. I try to limit myself to great books, or at least good books.
When I'm reading a good or great book, I'm torn. I never want it to end, ever. A good book pulls me in and keeps me there and distracts me from the world and I don't want to leave. Finishing a book means leaving it. So while I want the book to keep progressing, the story to keep moving, I also don't want it to move to the point where I'm done with the book and just looking at it and sighing and thinking Boy, was that a great book.
So I ration out my reading; I refuse to let myself read the whole book in one fell swoop. I read a little each day, treating my book like Charlie treated his birthday candy bar, spreading out the joy of each page, each word, each letter. Only twice in my life has a book ever overcome my willpower to do that.
That list is pretty long, by the way. I'm not going to tell you everyone who's on it. But I can no longer carry it around with me. There are a lot of talented people out there, and I'd like to meet most of them.
Nick Hornby has written many many books, and I've read most of them except for Fever Pitch, which I would have read but then they made it into a movie starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, and now if I read it I'm going to picture Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore as the characters in the book, and Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore are very high up on the list of People Who Make Me Not Want To Picture Them As Characters In The Books I'm Reading.
The books I have read by Nick Hornby are "How To Be Good," "About A Boy," "Slam" and "A Long Way Down." Which, as I look over his website, I see amounts to 4 of the 9 books he's written, which makes me sound like I was lying when I said I read most of them. But one of those books, as I look more closely at his website, is a short story anthology. Another was just released and is a collection of essays he wrote about what he's been reading, which I would not be inclined to buy or read, except that it's by Nick Hornby, so it might be very good. But that means that I've read 4 of 8 books he's written, and 4 of the 5 novels he's written, so I'm going to go ahead and say that I was being truthful when I said "I've read most of them."
Of the books by Nick Hornby that I've actually read, while all are very good, the book A Long Way Down stands way way above all the others, and is The Best Book To Read In One Sitting.
I very rarely read a book quickly anymore. For one thing,
I'm far too busy. For another, I spend a lot of time playing "Cloverfield" with the Babies! (That's pretty much my chief contribution in their life. Sweetie does all kinds of great things for them. I play "Cloverfield" and read them their Pop-Up books.) Gone are the days when I would take out a stack of books from the library and read them all in two weeks.Business aside, there's another reason I don't read quickly anymore. With less time to read, I'm more choosy about what I read, which is a good thing because I read a lot less crummy books. Nothing is worse than a crummy book. It's a waste of weeks of my time and imagination. I try to limit myself to great books, or at least good books.
When I'm reading a good or great book, I'm torn. I never want it to end, ever. A good book pulls me in and keeps me there and distracts me from the world and I don't want to leave. Finishing a book means leaving it. So while I want the book to keep progressing, the story to keep moving, I also don't want it to move to the point where I'm done with the book and just looking at it and sighing and thinking Boy, was that a great book.
So I ration out my reading; I refuse to let myself read the whole book in one fell swoop. I read a little each day, treating my book like Charlie treated his birthday candy bar, spreading out the joy of each page, each word, each letter. Only twice in my life has a book ever overcome my willpower to do that.
The first book ever to do that was The Stand by Stephen King. I read that book in four days, taking a break only to go to work at the sandwich shop I worked at. I read that book straight through in part because I couldn't sleep while I was reading it, and in part because it was so fascinating and well done. I would walk the five blocks to work, through a bad neighborhood, reading that book and then reluctantly tuck it away when I got to the shop.
That was 17 years ago. It's been a long time since I read a book
that good. I've read lots of good books since then, and some great ones, but not one I could not put down. Until I read A Long Way Down.
Did you ever read a book so good that when you were done, even after you were done, you couldn't put it down? A book so good that when you finished the story, you read that little "acknowledgement" section, then read the "Library of Congress" page, then just looked at the cover for a while? Then put it away but then took it back out a minute later and looked at the cover again? And then cotemplated reading it again, right then and there?
That book is A Long Way Down. I bought A Long Way Down because it was by Nick Hornby, and I'd read About A Boy* and I liked that book. I took A Long Way Down with me to a seminar I had to go to for continuing education; I typically bring magazines, a book, and my laptop to those because they are useless but required events, so I treat them like other useless but required things in my life (law school, family events) and sit in back and do my own thing.
I intended to read the book during the breaks. I got there early and started reading it while I waited for the seminar to start. Then I didn't stop reading it. I read it straight through for all 8 hours of the seminar, including the lunch break when I went out to my car and drank my Diet Dr. Pepper and ate my Ramen noodles and read the book, and all through the afternoon, even the ethics portion of the seminar, I kept reading. Then, when the seminar was done, I had a little book left. So I went out to my car and instead of going home, I sat in my car and read until the book was done. (That's the part where I looked at the acknowledgements and did all that other stuff.)
On the way home, while sitting at a stoplight, I pulled the book out of my briefcase and looked at the cover again.
A Long Way Down left me breathless and happy and sad all at once. It shocked me, how good it was. It made me disparage my own meager writing abilities. It made me want to know the characters and see their lives. It's one of only now two books that have ever made me cry.
The story sounds both simple and complicated. It follows four people: a television host, a single mother, a teenage girl, and an American, as they spend a year thrown together by circumstances. The circumstances, though, are that each of them went up to the top of the same building on New Years' Eve, each with the intention of killing themselves, each for their own reasons. Instead of killing themselves, they go share a pizza and then a year trying to help each other not die.
From that setup, which is ingenious, Nick Hornby sets out a story that is, to use a word I try not to overuse, astonishing. It's astonishing in how quickly it draws you in, in how real these people are, and in how Nick Hornby can yank your emotions around without you knowing it. It's astonishing how real the story seems-- from a premise that's so fictional and so unreal, Nick Hornby makes a narrative that feels like it happened to you, or at least some people who are close to you.
Another astonishing part: how a book about four people trying desperately not to leave lives that they found unbearable can be so funny. It's funny in the same breath as it's sad, funny at the same time as it's reaching out to you. This book is packed with the exact emotion that makes people cry at weddings but laugh at funerals -- not an inappropriate emotion, but an emotion that's all too appropriate, expressing the joy that we feel in the sadness of a moment, joy that we knew the person we're so sad to see go, or sadness that we feel when we're so happy for someone we love and we realize that every part of life should be filled with the happiness of a wedding day but it isn't. There's no word for that emotion. There should be but there isn't.
There's a book for that emotion, though, and it's A Long Way Down.
There's one final thing I can say about it: Nick Hornby created, in Maureen, one of the best characters ever in the history of literature and I won't and can't say why because it would totally destroy her part of the story. But when you read this book, and you will read it unless you've got something against greatness, you'll see what I mean.
A Long Way Down deserves to be in a library that maybe someday I'll build, a library of
books that you really cannot put down, and that you don't want to put down in the first place. It'll be a small library, and you won't be able to check out the book because I'll be reading it. Go get your own copy.
*I got to reading About A Boy by a circuitous route. The book was made into a movie. The movie had a soundtrack by "Badly Drawn Boy," and the soundtrack included the song "The Shining," which I downloaded because of the title, only to find out it had nothing to do with the book "The Shining," but was still a rather enjoyable song. So enjoyable that I wanted to get the whole soundtrack, but en route to getting the sound track I went to the bookstore and got the book instead. I still don't have the soundtrack. But I think that somehow, out of this, Nick Hornby owes Badly Drawn Boy a beer.
I haven't watched these in full, but they appear to be people acting out bits of the book, so here you go:
Beginning of the Novel Part 1:
Beginning of the Novel, Part 2:
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That was 17 years ago. It's been a long time since I read a book
that good. I've read lots of good books since then, and some great ones, but not one I could not put down. Until I read A Long Way Down.Did you ever read a book so good that when you were done, even after you were done, you couldn't put it down? A book so good that when you finished the story, you read that little "acknowledgement" section, then read the "Library of Congress" page, then just looked at the cover for a while? Then put it away but then took it back out a minute later and looked at the cover again? And then cotemplated reading it again, right then and there?
That book is A Long Way Down. I bought A Long Way Down because it was by Nick Hornby, and I'd read About A Boy* and I liked that book. I took A Long Way Down with me to a seminar I had to go to for continuing education; I typically bring magazines, a book, and my laptop to those because they are useless but required events, so I treat them like other useless but required things in my life (law school, family events) and sit in back and do my own thing.
I intended to read the book during the breaks. I got there early and started reading it while I waited for the seminar to start. Then I didn't stop reading it. I read it straight through for all 8 hours of the seminar, including the lunch break when I went out to my car and drank my Diet Dr. Pepper and ate my Ramen noodles and read the book, and all through the afternoon, even the ethics portion of the seminar, I kept reading. Then, when the seminar was done, I had a little book left. So I went out to my car and instead of going home, I sat in my car and read until the book was done. (That's the part where I looked at the acknowledgements and did all that other stuff.)
On the way home, while sitting at a stoplight, I pulled the book out of my briefcase and looked at the cover again.
A Long Way Down left me breathless and happy and sad all at once. It shocked me, how good it was. It made me disparage my own meager writing abilities. It made me want to know the characters and see their lives. It's one of only now two books that have ever made me cry.
The story sounds both simple and complicated. It follows four people: a television host, a single mother, a teenage girl, and an American, as they spend a year thrown together by circumstances. The circumstances, though, are that each of them went up to the top of the same building on New Years' Eve, each with the intention of killing themselves, each for their own reasons. Instead of killing themselves, they go share a pizza and then a year trying to help each other not die.
From that setup, which is ingenious, Nick Hornby sets out a story that is, to use a word I try not to overuse, astonishing. It's astonishing in how quickly it draws you in, in how real these people are, and in how Nick Hornby can yank your emotions around without you knowing it. It's astonishing how real the story seems-- from a premise that's so fictional and so unreal, Nick Hornby makes a narrative that feels like it happened to you, or at least some people who are close to you.
Another astonishing part: how a book about four people trying desperately not to leave lives that they found unbearable can be so funny. It's funny in the same breath as it's sad, funny at the same time as it's reaching out to you. This book is packed with the exact emotion that makes people cry at weddings but laugh at funerals -- not an inappropriate emotion, but an emotion that's all too appropriate, expressing the joy that we feel in the sadness of a moment, joy that we knew the person we're so sad to see go, or sadness that we feel when we're so happy for someone we love and we realize that every part of life should be filled with the happiness of a wedding day but it isn't. There's no word for that emotion. There should be but there isn't.
There's a book for that emotion, though, and it's A Long Way Down.
There's one final thing I can say about it: Nick Hornby created, in Maureen, one of the best characters ever in the history of literature and I won't and can't say why because it would totally destroy her part of the story. But when you read this book, and you will read it unless you've got something against greatness, you'll see what I mean.
A Long Way Down deserves to be in a library that maybe someday I'll build, a library of
books that you really cannot put down, and that you don't want to put down in the first place. It'll be a small library, and you won't be able to check out the book because I'll be reading it. Go get your own copy.*I got to reading About A Boy by a circuitous route. The book was made into a movie. The movie had a soundtrack by "Badly Drawn Boy," and the soundtrack included the song "The Shining," which I downloaded because of the title, only to find out it had nothing to do with the book "The Shining," but was still a rather enjoyable song. So enjoyable that I wanted to get the whole soundtrack, but en route to getting the sound track I went to the bookstore and got the book instead. I still don't have the soundtrack. But I think that somehow, out of this, Nick Hornby owes Badly Drawn Boy a beer.
I haven't watched these in full, but they appear to be people acting out bits of the book, so here you go:
Beginning of the Novel Part 1:
Beginning of the Novel, Part 2:
Click here to see all the other topics I’ve ever discussed!
Want a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.
Ever wonder who will win in a fight? What fight? ANY fight! My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad will tell you.
Hatbaby Will Not Be Denied:
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