Nick Hornby: How To Be Good

Right, so now it does feel a bit like a Hornby overload! Okay, I still like his style and language and the way he describes English mentality but this wasn’t an easy read. I felt really tired reading it, mentally exhausted trying to understand what message the book was trying to convey.

How To Be Good doesn’t exactly tell you how to be good, it touches on various possibilities but puts all of them in such a bad light that you will never feel good after you’ve done them. But in the end I guess it isn’t about you feeling good.

Everyone in the book is good - Katie is doing her good by being a doctor and healing people (yeah, right) and her husband David is being good by giving away his kids’ toys to strangers. The "goodest" person in the whole book is Mr. GoodNews who does good not only by having such peculiar name. Everyone in the book is so good that it makes you feel a bit sick. Which I guess might have been Hornby’s intention. After reading this book the last thing I wanted was to be good…

It's a very sarcastic book which is what makes it a bit of a tough read when somewhere deep in heart you actually want to be good. But interesting anyhow.

So what is the better "good"? Adopting homeless kids or not leaving the husband you can no longer stand? And how do we know we've done something good if we don't know what would happen if we hadn't done it?

My rating: YYYYY

Nick Hornby: Juliet, Naked

Having just read High Fidelity when I first saw the posters on the Tube announcing the new Horby’s book I couldn’t wait to get home and do my Amazon book shopping. Having read it I am not as overwhelmed as I hoped I would be. It’s not as funny as High Fidelity and not as engaging.

Juliet, Naked is a story of two people, Annie and Duncan, stuck together in a not the most exciting relationship of all, sharing a bed but not necessarily sharing their outlook on life. Duncan’s an obsessed fan of Tucker Crowe, an American singer who mysteriously disappeared years ago and didn’t record anything since. Annie is a museum worker who for fifteen years has been sharing Duncan’s obsession about Crowe but starts realising that there isn’t much more than this that they have in common.

It’s not the best book I read recently and not my Hornby’s favourite but there are some little jewels in Juliet, Naked that I enjoyed.

First one is Malcolm, Annie’s old fashioned and judgmental psychotherapist. Who is probably more dependant on her than she is on him given she’s his only patient. Malcolm could have done with some more wit but he made me smile as a character.

Another one is Gooleness as a place and the way Nick describes it. Only having lived in the UK for a couple of years I find this small seaside town atmosphere really fascinating. It’s not any seaside town, it’s an English seaside town that I’ve seen a few of and they all have a similar feel to them. Feel of remoteness and lack of freshness as if only old people lived there. The exhibition Annie is preparing is just one example of that. Nice one Nick!

It made me smile, it made me live in a seaside town for a few days, it showed me slightly different side of English life and that’s what I expect from a book. Will it stay in my mind for long? Probably not.

My rating: YYYYY