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Nick Hornby


UK flag (b.1957)

Nick Hornby was born in 1957. His father, Sir Derek Hornby, was a successful businessman. Hornby junior went to Maidenhead Grammar School then studied English at Cambridge. After teaching in Cambridge, he worked for the Korean electronics giant Samsung as a meeter and greeter for their executives in the UK.

After that, he worked as a teacher then as a freelance journalist and then became a novelist. His career really took off with the phenomenally successful Fever Pitch in 1992 and he hasn't looked back since. How to be Good made the 2001 Booker long-list.
 

Genres: Literary Fiction
 
Series contributed to
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Anthologies edited
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Non fiction series
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Non fiction
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Awards
Whitbread Prize Best Novel nominee (2005) : A Long Way Down


Nick Hornby recommends
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Room Temperature (1990)
Nicholson Baker
"Short, and funny, and bright as a button."
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Girls High (1990)
Barbara Anderson
"Barbara Anderson is a born writer."
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Pompey (1993)
Jonathan Meades
"The product of a brilliant mind"
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Going Down (1996)
Jennifer Belle
"Witty, gritty and thoroughly convincing."
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The Beach (1996)
Alex Garland
"THE BEACH is fresh, fast-paced, compulsive and clever - a LORD OF THE FLIES for the Generation X. It has all the makings of a cult classic."
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Bridget Jones's Diary (1996)
(Bridget Jones, book 1)
Helen Fielding
"Helen Fielding is one of the funniest writers in Britain and Bridget Jones is a creation of comic genius."
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The Speed Queen (1997)
Stewart O'Nan
"A terrific novel, gripping, quirky, funny, violent and heartbreaking. I haven't read a better book so far this year."
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Preston Falls (1998)
David Gates
"Preston Falls is dark and funny, bleak and brilliant...In other words, David Gates makes me sick with envy."
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The Speckled People (2000)
Hugo Hamilton
"A wonderful book... thoughtful and compelling, smart and original, beautifully written."
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Feed (2002)
M T Anderson
"Another book that can be added to the list entitled 'YA Novels I'd Never Heard of But Which Turn Out to Be Modern Classics' and Feed may well be the best of the lot... Funny, serious, sad, superbly realized."
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The Used Women's Book Club (2003)
Paul Bryers
"Bryers may be the best of his type."
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Havoc (2004)
Ronan Bennett
"With Greene gone, and Richard Ford last spotted in suburbia, we need writers like Ronan Bennett."
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We're in Trouble (2005)
Christopher Coake
"Sometimes, when you're reading these stories, you forget to breathe."
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What is the What (2006)
Dave Eggers
"One of the best writers around."
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Then We Came to the End (2007)
Joshua Ferris
"Terrific . . . The rhythms and substance of a working day slowly revealed to have the rhythms and substance of life itself."
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Sharp Teeth (2007)
Toby Barlow
"As ambitious as any literary novel, because underneath all that fur, it's about identity, community, love, death, and all the things we want our books to be about."
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Butterfly (2009)
Sonya Hartnett
"A dreamy, lyrical novel. Exquisitely written and unforgettable."
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One Day (2009)
David Nicholls
"Big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable . . . brilliant on the details of the last couple of decades of British cultural and political life . . . the perfect beach read for people who are normally repelled by the very idea of beach reads."
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The Financial Lives of the Poets (2009)
Jess Walter
"It made me laugh more than any other book this year."
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Red Plenty (2010)
Francis Spufford
"A hammer-and-sickle version of Altman's Nashville, with central committees replacing country music . . . [Spufford] has one of the most original minds in contemporary literature."
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Half a Life (2010)
Darin Strauss
"Precise, elegantly written, fresh, wise, and very sad."
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The Trouble with Lexie (2016)
Jessica Anya Blau
"Blau has a steady nerve, as well as a wicked imagination...It takes you a little while to realize that you're reading is a top-notch comic writing, because you're getting all the stuff you normally get in literary fiction as well; rites of passage, the complications of fractured families, the works."
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Bowlaway (2019)
Elizabeth McCracken
"Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite writers...I've read everything she's written...and there's nothing I haven't liked and admired enormously."
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We Run the Tides (2021)
Vendela Vida
"We Run the Tides is smart, perceptive, elegant, sad, surprising and addictive. And it’s also FUNNY. Who knew that you could combine all of those qualities into one slim volume? Not many writers, that’s for sure. I loved every single page, and was sorry when I had to say goodbye to Eulabee and her family."
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Trespasses (2022)
Louise Kennedy
"Trespasses is a beautiful, devastating novel. It feels real and true, and it loves its characters, utterly authentic people trying to live ordinary lives in desperate times. This book will last."
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Cult Classic (2022)
Sloane Crosley
"Cult Classic is aimed with deadly accuracy at those unfortunate enough to have dated only during the twenty-first century. It's witty - of course, because Sloane Crosley wrote it - and razor sharp, and very clever, ditto, but it's more romantic and redemptive than one had any right to expect. It also contains one-liners destined to appear on T-shirts and coffee mugs. It's so good. I couldn't stop reading it."
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Pineapple Street (2023)
Jenny Jackson
"Jenny Jackson has written a lovely, absorbing, acutely observed novel about class, money and love. These are the themes of Henry James and Jane Austen, but they are observed with a fresh eye and a contemporary voice. Who wouldn't want to read Pineapple Street?"

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