Proof…

… if any were needed, that no idea is original.

Having detailed my commitment to charting the books I read for an entire decade (in this previous post), today I happened across a slim volume in the library by Nick Hornby. Its title is The Complete Polysyllabic Spree and it comprises a collection of essays written for a magazine by Hornby detailing the books he bought and the books he read (those two things not always being the same) every month.

I will report back on my reaction to the book once I have read it (this perhaps being enough to see it go straight to the head of the queue, even forcing its way in front of the next two Lee Child novels that I took temporary possession of yesterday evening). The very existence of the book, and the essays within it, is pleasing on a couple of levels however:

1. If an idea is going to bear great similarity to someone else’s, then that someone might as well be Nick Hornby, and:

2. The main concern with the ‘Decade of Reading’ was that it could easily be considered a meaningless exercise. Listing books with no particular end goal will likely impress nobody, but what little I’ve seen of the interior of The Complete Polysyllabic Spree has been sufficient to make me realise that celebrating the act of reading is itself a meaningful enough goal.

So hurrah for books, for libraries, and for reading. That is all.