Books like The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

During World War II, a foster girl in Nazi Germany steals books to share with neighbors and a hidden Jewish man, proving literature’s power to nourish the soul amid darkness.

In an elite New England college, a charismatic classics professor lures a group of eccentric students into obsessive study, leading them from intellectual curiosity to corruption, betrayal, and ultimately murder.

Nick Hornby's witty debut follows Rob, a record‑shop owner with encyclopedic music knowledge but shaky relationship skills, as he navigates love, friendship and commitment in contemporary England.

Nick Hornby's second bestselling novel about sex, manliness, and fatherhood, about Will, a 36-year-old man child-free, discovering a way to meet women through single-parent groups, and Marcus, a 12-year-old boy dealing with a mother who makes him listen to Joni Mitchell rather than Nirvana.

In Tehran, Azar Nafisi secretly hires seven female students each week to read banned Western classics, revealing the personal and political struggles of women under Iran’s revolutionary regime.

Peter Mayle shares the joys and quirks of settling into a 200‑year‑old stone farmhouse in the Luberon, Provence, exploring local customs, seasonal rhythms, and the region’s culinary delights.

A tale of four individuals confronting the limits of choice, circumstance, and their own mortality.

A tribute to a lifelong obsession, Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby captures the fever pitch of fandom in Great Britain, from its agony and ecstasy to its defining role in young men's coming-of-age stories.

When the Queen stumbles into a Buckingham Palace mobile library, her love of books turns everyday rules on their head—raising questions about power, politics, and the very nature of order.

A collection of essays by Nick Hornby, focusing on his book collection and the books he reads in his busy life as a writer in America.

Stuff I've Been Reading by Nick Hornby - the bestselling novelist's rich, witty and inspiring reading diary 'Read what you enjoy, not what bores you,' Nick Hornby tells us. And in this new collection of his columns from the Believer magazine (taking off where The Complete Polysyllabic Spree finished), he shows us how it's done. Or at least, how he does it: whether plunging into a biography of Dickens whilst his children are destroying something in the room next door or devouring a whole series of children's books whilst on holiday. Hornby is the intelligent, committed but sceptical reader we'd all like to be. Admiring Ian McEwen's On Chesil Beach, he points out a surprising anachronism. Reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, he wonders why 'unflinching' is a term of praise among critics. And who but Nick Hornby could successfully juxtapose a discussion of a book on the Band with one on the Stasi? These accounts of one reader's experience of buying and reading, and sometimes not reading, books differ from all other reviews or critical appreciations - they take into account the role that books actually play in the lives of readers. This book, which is classic Hornby, confirms the novelist's status as one of the world's most exciting curators of culture. It will be loved by fans of About a Boy and High Fidelity, as well as readers of Will Self, Zadie Smith, Stewart Lee and Charlie Brooker. Nick Hornby has captivated readers and achieved widespread critical acclaim for his comic, well-observed novels About a Boy, High Fidelity, How to be Good, A Long Way Down (shortlisted for the Whitbread Award), Slam and Juliet, Naked. His four additional works of non-fiction, Fever Pitch, 31 Songs (shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award), The Complete Polysyllabic Spree and Pray are also available from Penguin.

Henry Miller’s memoir of his formative reading, offering candid reflections on major authors, lesser‑known influences, and personal experiences that shaped his literary outlook.

Better known for her five volume portrait of English rural life, Our Village, Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855) was one of the most prolific female writers of her day. Part critical essay, part autobiography, Recollections consists of a series of sketches on and selections from Mitford's favourite authors, stemming from her desire 'to make others relish a few favourite writers as heartily as I have relished them myself'. The collection is arranged according to Mitford's own eclectic system of categorization including 'fashionable poets', 'cavalier poets', and 'poetry that poets love'. Mitford wears her immense literary skill lightly and Recollections is masterfully written, full of lively wit and fascinating biographical detail. Published just three years before Mitford's death, it was based on earlier articles and letters. Authors included range from Chaucer to Sir Walter Scott and Mitford's friend Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Peter Orner’s essays blend personal memoir with meditations on literature, drawing on writers from Kafka to Woolf while exploring his own journeys through hospitals, cafés, and buses.

Ann Patchett's essays explore life's moments of enchantment and universal truths.

Nancy Pearl’s guide for book lovers, offering insightful suggestions and practical advice to help readers discover their next favorite titles.

In 'Juliet, Naked', Nick Hornby weaves a story of love, loneliness and music as a woman, a washed‑up singer, and a teenage fan rediscover themselves through an unlikely friendship and an acoustic re‑release of a celebrated album.

Cultural history on a grand scale, this immensely readable book is the story of writing from its very beginnings to its recent transformations through technology. Traversing four millennia, Martin shows how the written word originated, how it spread, and how it figured in the evolution of civilization. In pursuit of writing's origins, Henri-Jean Martin asks how much those origins owed to practical necessity, and how much to religious and social systems of symbols. He describes the precursors to writing and reveals its place in early civilizations as a mnemonic device in service of the spoken word. The tenacity of the oral tradition plays an important part in this history. All written texts were normally read aloud well into the thirteenth century, Martin notes, and even as late as the eighteenth century the concept of "taking notes" was largely unknown to educated individuals trained in classical rhetoric and arts of memory. The story of writing is also a history of technology, and Martin charts the progress of the written word from Sumerian clay tablets to papyrus to paper and the advent of the printing press. His discussion of technology and materials details the development of standardized writing as well, placing such innovations as spacing and capital letters in relation to the increased use and demystification of writing. Paying particular attention to the technological advances that took place in Germany, Martin chronicles the growing importance of printing right down to its explicit role in the spread and success of the Protestant Reformation. He shows how these technological and cultural movements gathered impetus with the Industrial Revolution, when literacy became preeminent. . Continuing on to the electronic revolution, Martin's account takes in the changes wrought on writing by computers and electronic systems of storage and communication, and offers surprising insights into the influence these new technologies have had on children born into the computer age. The power of writing to influence and dominate is, indeed, a central theme in this history, as Martin explores the processes by which the written word has gradually imposed its logic on society over four thousand years. . The summation of decades of study by one of the world's great scholars on the subject, this fascinating account of writing explains much about the world we inhabit, where we uneasily confer, accept, and resist the power of the written word.