Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

reading

The other night, I wrapped up Nick Hornby’s About a Boy. Finishing a book in less than a week is sort of “record time” for me these days. Since grad school ended and I no longer have to read insane numbers of pages for class every week, the time it takes me to get through a book has slowed somewhat, to the point where I’ve been known to pick at books for months at a time, reading only a chapter here and there until boredom or sleepiness strikes.

Hornby’s book was a happy exception. What I love most about his novels is how self-aware his main characters are, exposed through their frequent inner monologues, written out in snappy, observant prose. And I liked the gimmick in About a Boy where the perspective alternated, every other chapter, from adult Will to adolescent Marcus.

I picked up About a Boy at the authors’ reading / booksigning last Thursday at the Olsson’s in Courthouse. (I’d decided to come because I’d enjoyed the novel and the movie versions of High Fidelity, the movie version of About a Boy and his recent book The Polysyllabic Spree, which Rob had given me for Christmas.) Leaning against a window frame in the world music section of the store, I got through the first four (fairly short) chapters of the book I’d just purchased in the twenty minutes I waited for Hornby to come out.

Hornby was on a book tour to promote his latest novel, A Long Way Down, about four Londoners who go to the same spot on New Year’s Eve to commit suicide. He opened the reading by announcing to the crowd that it was his wife’s fourtieth birthday today, and that he was going to call her up. Once he had her on the phone — it looked like a Blackberry or a Treo — he said, simply, “The people of Washington have something to say to you,” and held the phone out in the air as the assembled crowd deliveredn an enthusiastically off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Hornby ended the call with a goofy, sing-song “Byeeee,” then switched back into “author on a book tour” mode. He read aloud a few selections from the new novel, then took questions from the audience about his novels, the movies based upon them and his writing process. I briefly considered standing in line for the booksigning afterwards, but with so many die-hard fans already in line (some of them holding as many as four of his books), I decided that what I had seen was enough and headed home to plow further into About a Boy.