"Is there any truer gift to a reader from any writer?" ponders Ali Smith in her introduction to The Reader, an anthology of her favourite writings by other authors. Apparently not. Smith's collection is just the first in a series from Constable & Robinson, while Penguin is offering Nick Hornby's The Complete Polysyllabic Spree - a collection of his monthly "Stuff I've Been Reading" columns from Believer magazine.
TV producers cottoned on to this idea years ago, and now cheap-and-easy 100 Greatest Films/Musicals/Sex Scenes proliferate. For writers, not only is using other people's stuff less labour-intensive than producing something yourself, it is also a chance to prove just how eclectic, obscure and/or wide-ranging your tastes are. Or, indeed, how precocious you were as a child: Smith's foreword recalls that she had - "unwittingly", of course - read a lot of Joyce, Orwell and Swift before the age of ten.
And if anyone questions your choices, you have a convenient disclaimer. Publishing permission "complications" are Smith's reason for not including Joyce, Carver, Munro, Sontag and Flannery O'Connor "and many more". Just in case anyone was wondering.
The Reader and The Polysyllabic Spree are different animals. Smith spares us her own musings before each extract, while Hornby offers sagacious advice such as, "if you're reading a book that's killing you, put it down and read something else". Smith claims she doesn't want to "get in the way of the reader", but Hornby knows that the project is all about him. He might even be poking fun at the whole idea: each column includes a "Books Bought" list, which is invariably longer than the "Books Read".
Perhaps, like me, he thinks that "Stuff I've Been Reading" should really be called "Stuff I'd Like People to Know I've Been Reading, or Am At Least Aware of and Have Good Intentions to One Day Read".
