About a book

     At the library this week, I was happy and surprised to discover that one of my favorite authors, Nick Hornby, has a new book out. I was even more happy and surprised that the book, Funny Girl, wasn't on hold which meant that I could check it out and bring it home right away. The book has not disappointed. I'm completely hooked by the characters, who I find endearing and can picture vividly in my mind, along with the challenges and pleasures they encounter.
     I was first introduced to Nick Hornby back in the mid-nineties when my dear friend Jack read me a perfect passage from High Fidelity. I had called him in tears, distraught about my love life and the dismal prospects thereof. This is what he read, "Only people of a certain disposition are afraid of being alone for the rest of their life at the age of twenty-six; we were of that disposition." Of course I was twenty-six, and of exactly that disposition too. His reading that line to me was perfect.
     A few years later, my roommate Abby and I went to a reading Nick Hornby gave at a theater in Brookline. After he read, we waited in a long line to have our books signed and when it was my turn, I noted the people waiting behind, but asked if it would be okay if I told him my favorite line. He said yes, and I told him my story about how his work had made me feel better. He was so kind and said that a lot of people had told him their favorite lines from his books, but no one had mentioned that one before.
     I still find that line perfect, and my friend reading it to me to be perfect. My signed copy of High Fidelity is a treasured hold-in-my-hand talisman of that time.