I started reading his books when I was but 12 years old with High Fidelity. I obviously didn't understand the intricacies of the writing, nor could I really explain why I liked it, but I just knew that I did. I went back and read Fever Pitch, a book about football, and I even loved that. It was About A Boy, my first literary hardback, that cemented my love for him though. It just made me feel all these feelings, and I read it over and over. I wanted to live inside it. And as an adult, as someone who has studied the... heck... out of a lot of books in order to analyse writing style, I can say with a reasonable amount of assurance that his books are, in fact, Good Writing.
To honour this, I am going to rank his novels, arbitrarily, into my own special Top 5! Read on...
[I did say novels, which excludes such excellent reads as The Polysyllabic Spree
, Fever Pitch
and 31 Songs
, as well as his short stories and films. If you would like to know how I would rank his films... I'll tell you!1. High Fidelity
2. About A Boy
3. An Education
4. Fever Pitch, the English One
5 Fever Pitch, the American One (Because I haven't seen it, largely.)]
5. Slam
This is a sci-fi-ish young adult adventure, but not really. It's mostly just a Nick Hornby book, with this one weird bit of time travelling, and a kind-of talking Tony Hawks poster. I did really like this book, but it didn't stay with me much after I read it. The plot is kind of all over the place, and I don't think the resolution is that strong, nor the characters that compelling. This is all relative though, because every page is still alive with brilliant Hornby-isms (such as the afore-mentioned poster, with its often wise, but largely inappropriate quotes from the Tony Hawks autobiography, and the generally unglamorous teen pregnancy vibe).4. High Fidelity
Basically, I couldn't really decide on a proper top 4, because they're all brilliant, so I have ranked these in order of which I'd most like to read again. This is bottom of the 4, largely because I've read it loads already, and seen the film quite a few times too. It's great, you know it is, with its list obsession, and collecting obsession, and love obsession. I would say that I never really got the love of Barry's character, or for any of the male characters in the book, to be honest, but it is probably one of the funniest and, in the end, is quite romantic. I think he'd write it differently now though, maybe less ponderously? Maybe more ponderously?!
3. About A Boy
This book helped me through my teen years greatly. So much so, that I think I'd find it quite painful to read again. What I do know is that the dual narrative works brilliantly, and Ellie is my second favourite creation of Hornby's, and it's one of those brilliant funny/sad type books that will get you. Every. Time. Yes, anyway, this is, I think, Hornby's superior coming-of-ager, as it features two characters growing up (one a boy and one a man), with hilarious and moving consequences. Just try not to read it thinking about Hugh Grant or the boy from Skins, if you can. You can have Toni Collette though.2. Juliet, Naked
This is his most recent, and I don't have much more to say than that it's lovely, beautiful, and kind of perfect. If Slam is Hornby's SF YA novel, then Juliet, Naked is his chick-lit novel. The premise is something like this: woman [this is not the only reason that this is chick-lit-like, I am not that kind of man] lives with man obsessed by obscure rockstar, and is dissatisfied by her life with him, through a series of unbelievable events, she conducts an online romance with the very same rockstar and eventually falls in love with him in real life, blah blah blah. But, you know what I'm going to say, the way he does it is just so good! The only reason this doesn't win is that it doesn't have any one stand out, show-stopping character (though the rockstar's son is a cutie). Thoroughly recommend reading this, even though I have slightly spoiled the ending (but not really).1. A Long Way Down
And here is our winner! Four people meet on top of a roof on New Year's Eve, intending to kill themselves. Hilarious hijinks ensue. Did I mention that one of the characters, Jess, is one of the best literary characters of all time? Well now I have. She's a spiky, chav-ish, lost girl, who hates big words and bickers fantastically with Martin Sharp, a disgraced TV presenter who likes big words. This book revived my love for Hornby after, erm, How To Be Good
, and it did so big time. You'd think a book that's split between four completely different narrators would get confusing, or feel jumpy, but it never does. It's just brilliant. And funny. And it asks all kind of deep questions, if you like that sort of thing. Also, it features the only Hornby music reference I have ever got, which makes me like it even more.
, which I loved in its early days but have found progressively more irritating as years have gone by and, I believe, they're now folding it in to the main DC Universe anyway; 
is generally well-written and endearing, but has never quite grabbed me enough to keep me hooked, but I do admire Gail Simone; finally, there's 
, which was just got a bit too trippy by the end. All worth a read though!
, 
, and some classic issues of the Punisher. Its audience is its title, but all the ridiculous violence and knob-jokes aside, it can be a pretty intelligent read, and is almost always engaging. The main characters, even the everyman Wee Hughie (whose look is based on Simon Pegg), can be unlikeable bastards, and some awful things do happen in it but... it's just so entertaining, and carried off with such confidence, that it's hard not to find the book charming anyway.
, 
and 
, and I'd allowed it, this top five might have mostly featured you. But this comic series, which is comprised of two 6-issue trades, one spin-off mini (
) and one original graphic novel (
is great, with advice very specific to novel writing, rather than the more generic self help you can get from other CW books. She writes about the Shitty First Draft and professional jealousy and how seemingly endless the writing process can be (that's where the title comes from: take it all one step at a time, and try not to look at the bigger picture too much). And she writes with a very human and quite funny voice, so it's a pretty neat package. Probably less stuff in the way of actual writing advice, but if you're a writer, you probably need the moral support more than anything, right?
, though it does provide some very practical and pragmatic advice. It's just that that advice is often that you should probably give up writing because you're not serious enough about it. Maybe I was in a bad place when I read it, and it was certainly before my writing-morale-boosting masters course, but I remember feeling a bit like I should probably never write again afterwards... But real people like it, so feel free to ignore me on this.
by Stephen King is an interesting writing book/memoir, even if you're not a huge King fan. Though I would say, some of his advice is a little prescriptive. For example, he thinks a writer should write 2000 words a day. Um... some people like to spend time thinking about what they're writing, Stephen! And then he says that we should cut out 10% of all the words when we're revising. Which I would recommend for writers like him (he is kind of verbose), but not everyone needs to cut back. Some people need to add, even. But these quite specific points aside, he does offer some really useful advice and it's always interesting to hear about the lives of other writers, isn't it?
(yeah, his name takes up most of the cover), is very entertaining and insightful. PAD (as the messageboard geeks like me call him) is one of the best current (and past) comic book writers and totally knows his stuff, which he delivers in his usual, sarcastic and grumpy way. He is charming. There's also Scott McCloud, who has written on the medium of comics and also about writing them, both in comic form. They are classics, and really go to show what can be achieved in the medium. They're also just good reads.
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