Monday, January 11, 2010

Nose In It:

The book you’re reading at home that you take with you on a trip doesn’t always travel well. It can. It can ease the transition, keep you connected to home, act as an emotional buffer, be a security blanket. Or it can lose its appeal in the bright sun of vacation. The National Book Award winning-novel, Colum McCann’s Let The Great World Spin is an example of the latter. It didn’t have enough of whatever I needed to hold me while I was away. Don DeLillo’s and Joseph O’Neill’s ‘9/11’novels (that’s what McCann’s is, in its way) held me brilliantly in ways this one didn’t.

I’m reading Nick Hornby’s first book, Fever Pitch, a memoir of being a soccer fan. It’s wonderfully written, if a bit uncomfortable; his obsession is a little too intense for me.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is a true story. Also about obsession; about rare books and what some people do to acquire them. Weirdly fascinating.

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