I believe he's quite deserving of his own thread, so here's my personal rundown of his novels:

High Fidelity - The movie first introduced me to him, and thank god. The book is fantastic, and I would say remains my favorite of his.

About A Boy - Another great book. The movie did it no justice, although Hugh Grant was exactly the type of person I was picturing as the leading role while reading it.

How To Be Good - Probably my second favorite of his novels. Just a great story. Females, correct me if I'm wrong, but he sure seems to do an amazing job writing from the perspective of a woman in this one.

A Long Way Down - Just finished reading it in less than 2 days. I loved every bit of it. The way he has 4 characters narrating was just a pleasure to read. It's challenging How To Be Good for #2 on my list.

Polysyllabic Spree/Songbook - Both great collections. It's amazing how Hornby can put in words such similar feelings I have about certain books and songs. I wish I had 1/4 the ability to express my appreciation of these pieces of art that he does.

Fever Pitch - I keep meaning to get around to reading it, but can never find it a my local bookstores and have yet to order it off Amazon. Definitely need to get on this.

Speaking With The Angel/My Favourite Year - Other Hornby being the editor of these two, I don't really know much about them. I've seen Speaking With The Angel and considered picking it up at one point, but passed it over for something else. Anyone suggest them? Can compare them to other similar books?

High Fidelity took me several attempts to finally finish, but I'm glad I did, and About A Boy (the book) was infinitely better than the movie.

I'll have to pick up How to Be Good one of these days

I've only read High Fidelity which I loved and I will probably make a trip to the library today and pick up some of his other books.

On a side note, I finally watched this movie last night and I really enjoyed it.

One of the few movies I think was a good adaptation of the book. The novel is better, but the movie can stand alone as a great piece of work, as well.

I can honestly say High Fidelity is my favorite book ever. I used to want to be smart and cool and say Siddartha or JD Salinger's Nine Stories (both of which I like)...but when it comes down to it, high fidelity is the only book that ive ever truely loved. There are two seperate paragraphs that when I read them I just go.... YES YES YES. I have felt that before, but had never had the ability to put it into words.

I haven't enjoyed the rest of his books as much, although they were enjoyable. I didn't realize he had a new one out, though I'll definitely have to grab that up, asap.

Speaking with the angels.. I didn't love nick hornby's story, but dave eggers "after I was thrown in the water and before I drown" (or some title like that) has a very special place in my heart. i think it is absolutely brilliant.

Casey

Wow. I always forget that other people read anymore.

I went through About a Boy, How to be Good and High Fidelity in 4 days. I really enjoy his writing style and his stories.

The first book I read by him was About a Boy and I absolutely loved it. The movie was good, but didn't really achieve the greatness that the book did. I would be reading in class and some of those lines would make me laugh out loud, interrupting the whole class. I just love the way he writes.

I read High Fidelity before I saw the movie (am I the only one?) and absolutely fell in love with it. The top 5 thing, in general, was something I could relate to all too well. I didn't like how the movie was set in Chicago (I think) instead of England, though, as I really enjoyed the British aspect of the book.

I can't wait to read the new one. I just have to get around to picking it up.

P.S. I also love Dave Eggers. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was amazing.

No, you aren't the only one. I read it in the fall 1997 for the first time and gave copies of it to my best friend and my mom for christmas that year, I loved it so much. I was pregnant with my first child and the only negative thing I can say about the book is that at one point they mention bacon and avocado sandwiches (pg 225 to be exact) and I was reading the book about midnight and I had the most miserable cravings for bacon for hours after that and couldn't sleep because of it (and, of course, no bacon in the house).

And the paragraphs I totally identified with are page 252 where laura is in rob's car with him after the funeral and she makes a statement about wanting to have sex, either that or put her hand in the fire so she can feel something other than misery and guilt.

and then on page 274 where rob is talking about women and the way media portrays them. it is the last two paragrphs of that chapter.

the most impressive statement to me was "we worked out very quickly that Bond girls were out of our league, but the realization that women don't ever look at us the way ursula andress locked at sean connery, or even in the way that doris day looked at rock hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us. In my case, I'm not at all sure that it ever did."

High Fidelity is great. I love both the movie and the book.

Need to check some of his other stuff.

About a Boy is such an amazing book. The movie was good, but the book is probably my favorite. I haven't read any of his other stuff but I have been meaning to.

Read High Fidelity now!!!!!

I just went out a bought High Fidelity and How to be Good.

You'll be highly pleased with those purchases.

i like his work a lot, though i shall provide a small voice of dissent and say that i didn't think 'how to be good' come off quite as well as maybe it could have.

So I'm about 2/3 of the way into Fever Pitch. My knowledge of soccer is extremely limited. My knowledge of English Cup football is nearly nonexistent. That said, this book is brilliant.

All you need to know is that the English FA-cup means a great deal.

Thanks to Nick Hornby, I've picked that up.

As an Arsenal fan of epic proportions... I can safely say that Fever Pitch is something of a Bible to us Gooners.

Glad you are enjoying.

A quick run-down:

The league/Division 1 is a league of around 20 teams. At the end of the season, the bottom three teams get "relegated" to the next league, and thte top 3 teams of that league get "promoted".

At the end of the season, the team with the most points wins. There is no "Superbowl". (<-- you must understand this to "get" the enormity of the 1989 game at Anfield-- it was a freak of nature that these teams played on the final day of the season)

The FA Cup is a parallel comp which is purely knockout - just like a tennis tournament.

And then there's the League Cup - similar to the FA Cup but less prestigious.

And finally, the European competitions... also run parallel to the above. Generally reserved for the best teams of each country.

Hope that helps!

here's my favorite bit that nick hornby's written so far:

We hug at the front door, and she's crying a little.
"I don't really know what I'm doing," she says.
"I can see that," I say, which is sort of a joke and sort of not. "You don't have to go now. You can stay until whenever."
"Thanks. But we've done the hard part now. I might as well, you know..."
"Well, stay for tonight, then."
But she just grimaces, and reaches for the door handle.
It's a clumsy exit. She hasn't got a free hnad, but she tries to open the door anyway and can't, so I do it for her, but I'm in the way, so I have to go through on to the landing to let her out, and she has to prop the door open because I haven't got a key, and I have to squeeze back past her to catch the door before it shuts behind her. And that's it.
I regret to say that this great feeling, part liberation and part nervous excitment, enters me somewhere around my toes and sweeps through me in a great wave. I have felt this before, and I know it doesn't mean that much--confusingly, for example, it doesn't mean that i'm going to feel ecstatically happy for the next few weeks. But I do know that I should work with it, enjoy it while it lasts.
This is how I commemerate my return to the Kingdom of the Single: I sit down in my chair, the one that will stay here with me, and pick bits of stuffing out of the arm; I light a cigarette, even though it is still early and I don't really feel like one, simply because I am now free to smoke in the flat whenever I want, without rows; I wonder whether I have already met the next person I will sleep with, or whether it will be someone currently unknown to me; I wonder what she looks like, and whether we'll do it here, or at her place, and what that place will be like; I decide to have a Chess Records logo painted on the sitting room wall. (There was a shop in Camden that had them all--Chess, Stax, Motown, Trojan--stencilled onto the brickwork beside the enterance, and it looked brilliant. Maybe I could get a hold of the guy who did that and ask him to do a smaller version here.) I feel OK. I feel good. I go to work.

and incidentally, there's a film version of fever pitch that doesn't feature jimmy fallon. i've not read the book, but the movie was relatively decent.

I finally got to starting High Fidelity last night. It's really interesting so far. I love the way Hornby writes.