Really, I've had this idea well before Hornby published The Polysyllabic Spree, and to be honest, I've never
picked up a copy of The Believer or wherever he published those essays, so I had no idea he'd been doing the same thing I've been doing in letters and journals for decades now. So I don't feel too bad now that I'm writing a monthly or thereabouts essay on books similar to Hornby's. I tip my hat to him for doing it first, and I thank him for Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, and About a Boy while forgiving him for
How to Be Good.1
My own "Books Bought" section is going to be skimpy for awhile. My wife and I bought a house last summer, which required a major adjustment in our spending habits for awhile, and then, the day before we mailed in our second mortgage payment, we received a threatening letter from our local tax department. Did you know that, in Pennsylvania and 4 or so other states, towns and cities and boroughs and townships and municipalities however else designated on official documents can charge their residents an income tax on top of state and federal income taxes? Neither did we. So we have about ten years of back taxes, interests and penalties to pay off, and that's going to keep us from buying as many books as we tend to. Hell, I expected to be house-poor. When we first bought the house, I joked that "going out to eat" would involve taking a sandwich and a beer to the back porch. Then along comes this bill that will eventually cost us around $7400 or so. That's a lot of books going unpurchased.
We didn't get digital cable right away when we moved, and with the tax problem, we won't for the foreseeable future. It doesn't make much sense when we're both working 60-70 hours per week to pay $75 a month for cable (and without cable in Western Pennsylvania, you don't really have TV) to watch a couple of sporting events and a few random Law and Order episodes per week. As a result, in addition to a renewed appreciation for NPR newscasts and the local classical music station, I'm actually getting to read much more than I expected, when I first figured out how many hours I was going to be working this year.
Next page: The Dead Monk Bench
