This website in a book!
Starting in March of 2004 (I think, I don’t feel like checking) Nick Hornby of About a Boy and High Fidelity began writing a monthly column (I wanna say 2000-3000 words per month) where he catalogs the books he buys, the books he reads, and his thoughts on both. He even does us the service of mostly skipping books he didn’t like and not naming a lot of other books. He will mention when he doesn’t finish something, but that usually comes with an explanation as to why, that generally ends up blaming himself instead of the book. And so each month, there’s a few recommendations and a few being made aware of some books to account for, and all of this is of course circa 2005, but what’s generally great about this book is that his reading taste is pretty eclectic, including where he gets on little kicks. So the effect then is that you end up getting a lot of recommendations of many different genres (though he’s not a big fan of genre fiction — well he likes crime) with some deeper explanation as to why. He also clearly decides to put brand new books he’s acquired on top of his pile and so you can see how his book buying also influences his reading and back and forth.
He’s insightful, he loves book, he hates hating books so he mostly skips that (which is fine, as much as I like not liking books, I don’t really care to read about other people’s preferences), and he’s fine. He strikes me as a generous reader of his friends and family (his sister is married to Robert Harris of Fatherland fame).
(PHoto: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17707873-ten-years-in-the-tub)
