Ten Years in the Tub

This is a book for readers. ... Even more so than all other books, which kind of by definition are also for readers. There's not a single book, or even publication, that has so drastically blown up my to-read list in the last year or so. Hornby is a person who loves books in the same way most millenials love television — enthusiastically, unrelentingly and with numerous exhortations as to why you should love it, too.
I appreciate that Hornby doesn't assume we've all read the book before he gets around to talking about it. Like a good (regular) book reviewer, he largely avoids spoilers and (unlike most regular reviewers) is forbidden by decree from slagging on those things that don't meet his taste.
Even past the book recommendations, show more though, are Hornby's insights and quips about reading, life, and other redundancies. His idea that some books are bad but also sometimes they're just not read properly, for example, is one of the best arguments in favor of a "no negative reviews" policy I've ever heard. And even if you hate Arsenal (or don't care about sports in any way), his excuses and slackening reading pace through some months will give comfort to all those who sometimes can't find the time for books in a given month (or two). show less

This was a great book to take on vacation. Being composed of ten years of monthly columns, it's made up of almost 120 bite-sized pieces (he took some breaks). And Hornby, while as smart and literate as you would wish, also has the knack of writing (everything) in the voice of an always cheerful, always reasonable friend who happens to be sitting across the table from you at the pub, talking about books. It's been almost a year since I've read it, and I'm probably going to read a lot of it again, because I not only love books, I love to listen to (or read) other intelligent people about why they love books. Sometimes I learn something I didn't know about how to enjoy books, or why I should pick up a book that I'd thought I wouldn't show more like.

There are two problems with "Ten Years in the Tub." One is that Hornby is writing with one hand tied behind his back--the one tattooed H-A-T-E across the knuckles. The Believer, the magazine in which these essays were first published, had a policy of not publishing negative reviews. So if Hornby didn't like a book, he simply wasn't allowed to mention it. And that's sad. Hornby is a good enough writer so that the reader can judge whether he's being unfair to a book he didn't like, and The Believer should trust their readers enough to let them judge whether they should go along with Hornby on not liking it. That's just my opinion; and it may be overinformed by how much I missed seeing a bad book savaged. (It can be a great pleasure and a spice that perks up a bland stew.) The other problem is that each month Hornby lists the books he bought...and the books he read. And, of course, he only reviews the books he read. What's the problem? The books he bought are often, to my mind, by far the more interesting. For example, in his very first column, he mentions that while on holiday at Hay-on-Wye, the UK's famous town of bookshops, he bought ("for a pound, pure maybe-one-day whimsy, doomed to top-shelf oblivion") Michael Heyward's "The Ern Malley Affair," a book I read years ago and have been simply dying to talk to someone--anyone--about ever since. Other books Hornby bought and never read include "Wonder Boys" by Michael Chabon, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" by Jon Ronson, "The Tender Bar: A Memoir" by J. R. Moehringer, "Darkness Falls from the Air" by Nigel Balchin, "Fire from Heaven" by Mary Renault, "The Anthologist" by Nicholson Baker, "36 Arguments for the Existence of God" by Rebecca Goldstein, and on and on and on. It's infuriating. The least he could have done is not mentioned them at all.

But still, this book is a treasurehouse, and as I look through it again I see books and authors mentioned whom I've discovered since I read it first, and Hornby's comments are always spot on. I can hardly put it down. You should both buy it and read it. show less

This is a book for readers. ... Even more so than all other books, which kind of by definition are also for readers. There's not a single book, or even publication, that has so drastically blown up my to-read list in the last year or so. Hornby is a person who loves books in the same way most millenials love television — enthusiastically, unrelentingly and with numerous exhortations as to why you should love it, too.
I appreciate that Hornby doesn't assume we've all read the book before he gets around to talking about it. Like a good (regular) book reviewer, he largely avoids spoilers and (unlike most regular reviewers) is forbidden by decree from slagging on those things that don't meet his taste.
Even past the book recommendations, show more though, are Hornby's insights and quips about reading, life, and other redundancies. His idea that some books are bad but also sometimes they're just not read properly, for example, is one of the best arguments in favor of a "no negative reviews" policy I've ever heard. And even if you hate Arsenal (or don't care about sports in any way), his excuses and slackening reading pace through some months will give comfort to all those who sometimes can't find the time for books in a given month (or two). show less

Reading this book was just plain fun. It didn't even really feel like reading (not that reading isn't fun, but it can certainly have it's sad/depressing/make-you-think-really-hard moments. Ten Years in the Tub isn't actually a book so much as a collection of about ten years of English novelist Nick Hornby's columns from the monthly magazine, The Believer. Every month, Hornby catalogs the books he's bought that month and the books he's read that month (the former usually exceeds the latter, something I think a great deal of people here at LT can empathize with) and then writes a short, usually quite funny article explaining his choices in both categories and his experiences with them.

It's quite nice to hear that even someone who writes show more for a living often gets distracted with everyday life and other passions (soccer or "football," music) to read all that he'd like and all that he buys. Or in some cases, how these passions influence what he reads. Hornby also shares tidbits of his family life (musings about his autistic son, quips at his marriage) and offers his own insight about how and why we read.

But as I already noted, the column is in essence meant to be funny, often even satirical and it made me giggle quite a bit. (though after reading a series of very American novels, I guess that wry British sense of humor got me quite easily). show less

Dear Mr. Hornby, if you are out there: I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU ABOUT MYSTIC RIVER.

I loved this book. I feel like I should laugh more, and [b:Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books|17707873|Ten Years in the Tub A Decade Soaking in Great Books|Nick Hornby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386921814l/17707873._SX50_.jpg|24757417] helped me to make pretty good progress on that front. At one point my 10-year-old son said, "Mom, stop, what's so funny?" Secretly I thought - he'll never get this, really, this is such sophisticated humor - and it was over his objections I read him the part that was so funny. Spoiler alert: HE LAUGHED TOO.

If you are a person who loves books, you should read this one.

This is a collection of Nick Hornby's columns written for the Believer magazine, in which he has the highly enviable task of discussing the books he's been reading each month. Along the way he also chronicles life with his family, music, movies, and the trials and tribulations of being an Arsenal supporter.

I was half-anticipating, half-fearing a hail of book bullets from this book, but on the whole I escaped relatively unscathed. Some books were mentioned that are already on my to-read list (e.g. Hangover Square, by Patrick Hamilton), and others I would consider as gift ideas for my dad instead (e.g. most of the music biographies he reads). But even if I wasn't rushing out to buy all of the titles he mentioned, I still enjoyed reading show more what he had to say about them and about the process of reviewing in general. I was also surprised to learn that Robert Harris, author of Enigma and Pompeii, is his brother-in-law, which he mentioned whenever he read and reviewed one of Harris's books.

I would recommend this if you like Hornby's books and want to find out what he likes to read, or if you like books about books. It is very easy to devour a whole bunch of columns in one sitting, but probably not the best idea, because some of the jokes get repetitive due to the columns being grouped in a single collection instead of spaced out over monthly magazine issues (e.g. the ones about the Polysyllabic Spree, the people who apparently run the Believer magazine). show less

Apparently Nick Hornby has been contributing a column about the books he has read to an American arts magazine called The Believer for more than ten years and this is a collection of said articles. I had never even heard of the magazine, although it still exists and he still seems to be contributing to it. I enjoyed this book very much and entertained (?) my husband by insisting on reading chunks of it to him. The Britishness and the humour appealed to me, although I enjoy a critical review as much as the next person (critical reviews not allowed in The Believer).

I would have given it five stars, were it not for the fact that I read almost exclusively fiction and have only a superficial interest in football and rock music, so the show more overlap between what Hornby read and what I was reading during the period covered was not enormous. By the very end I was losing interest a bit, though; it would probably benefit from being read in smaller chunks. show less