"Fever Pitch" by Nick Hornby

I was a little aprehensive about reading this book, for several reasons: I know very little about organised professional sports, I know nothing about British football in particular, and I don't especially like the sport. Luckily for me, "Fever Pitch" turned out to a book more about coming of age and irrational obsession, then it was about sport specifics. I would like that I am a mature adult (even if some don't agree) and I definitely understand obsession.

[Aside: Normally I would use "soccer" to reference the sport - even though I agreee that the word "football" more aptly describes the British sport of said name then it does the American sport - merely to avoid ambiguity. Because of the nature of the book, and my living in England, I will follow the author's convention and use football.]

So as it turned out, I loved this book. I could draw infinite parallels with the protagonist (in this case Hornby himself, as this is a piece of autobiography) on most every subject. And while Hornby had a significantly more rocky childhood (specifically with his parents divorce when he was twelve), I still felt many of the same adolescent confusions that he did, and I was also able to find solace in an escapist medium. As pathetic as it may sound, in many ways his obsession with football mirrored by own obsession with comic books.

Nick Hornby is fast becoming one of my favorite authors, and some of my favorite lines of Honrby prose can now be found in this book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed other woks of his, or anyone who has ever felt lost in the rush to grow up and found a personal way to escape from it all. Or, I'm sure, anyone who just likes football. I did learn a load of interesting facts about the British past time, and I must admit I have now watched an Arsenal game (the club Hornby loves in the book) on television - merely because of this book.

Incidently, I had seen the American movie "Fever Pitch" (with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore) before reading the book. Regardless of what the opening credits of the movie might claim, that movie is in no discernable way inspired by this book. Both are enjoyable in their own rights (although the book is far superior), but in no way should they be thought of as being connected.

"Notes on A Small Island" by Bill Bryson

I really enjoyed this book. To be honest, this surprised me. I really only started reading it because I had left my current book at home and was bored on a lunch break at work. I recognized the author and everything else on the staff book shelf looked bland.

This is technically a travel book about England, which is the main reason I didn't think I would like it. It's travel literature - story about someone's experiences on a trip - as opposed to travel guide, but I was still apprehensive. In the end my boredom won me over.

Bryson is an American who immigrated in the UK in his twenties, who - the book explains - is preparing to permanently return to the US to raise his young family. The story is a first-hand account of the author's months long trip around Great Britain in the early 1990s, just months before that departure. The trip was meant to be somewhat of a "farewell tour". I must admit, that even as I write this, the book's premise does not sound very appealing. No wonder I was hesitant to read it in the first place.

The amazing and enjoyable part of this book, though, is Bryson himself. He's sarcastic, at times both self-rightous and self-deprecating, and just thouroughly amusing. Bryson insists on walking everywhere he goes (somewhat understandable, yet still amusing in many places), has the strangest relationship with food and drink, frequently makes whim decisions he immediately regrets, and constantly complains about urbanization and architecture. Many times I drew attention to himself in the luch room because I was laughing loudly to myself.

Also because at the time of writing he had lived in the UK for over a decade, Bryson is able to interpret many aspects of Britain that might go over the heads of people new to the country.

I think that this would be a great read for a North American who is familiar with England. A lot of the humour in the book pretty much requires a passing knowledge of both cultures. I don't know if a born-and-bred Brit would fully appreciate parts of the book though, becuase Bryson tends to comment on the absurdity of many British customs, when looked out from an outsider's perspective.

"The Ladies of Grace Adieu" by Susanna Clarke

I have been wanting to read this book for quite some time now, but just haven't been able to get around to it.

This is the unoffical sequel to "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" by the same author. I say unoffical because this is not a novel in the sense of the first book. "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" is a collection of unconnected short stories set in the same universe as Clarke first book, and shares several of the same characters. Jonathan Strange himself appears in the first story, which shares it's name with the collection.

I quite like short stories. Often I find that with many authors I tend to prefer their short stories to their novels (Stephen King for instance). I enjoyed many of Clarke's short stories in this collection, but more than anything else I found that they left me wanting more. I think that Susanna Clarke will join the short list of authors whose longer works I prefer.

I really loved "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell". I know that many people I've talked to about it have had mixed reviews, but there was just something about the book that drew me in. I found the same thing about some of the stories contained in this collection, but not all of them. Actually, to be prefectly honest, I didn't like the length of many of the short stories. Some of the stories I felt had a decent plot idea for a ten page story, but too much fluff thickening it out to twenty or thirty pages. And then others stories I felt had great characters that were so interesting that I could have read a whole novel about them - even if they didn't do anything and all of the pages were just fluff.

I still quite enjoyed this book, and it was nice to read something with a different pace than the other books I've read lately. As I said above, there are a lot of interesting characters. SOme of these are well known (like the Duke of Wellington or Queen Mabb) and others are complete unknown. I think "Tom Brightwind" was my favorite of the short stories, and that story's two previously unknown protagonists were my favorite of the characters.

Charles Vess contributes an amazing full-page illustration, as well as a detailed title page, to each of the stories. I first encountered the artist through a number of Neil Gaiman's comic stories. (Interestingly enough, Gaiman winning praise of "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell" is what finally pushed me over the fence I was sitting on with regards to the novel. I suspect the three must be friends, in some way.)

I hope that now Clarke will opted to write another full length novel, even if that does mean she leaves the beloved world of Strange and Norell behind.