This is what might be called a meta-review: a review of reviews, writing about writing (actually, to be more accurate, writing about writing about writing). "The Polysyllabic Spree" is a collection of monthly columns by Nick Hornby (of "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy" fame, and yes they were books first), originally published in the Believer magazine. In each column, he lists the books he has bought that month and the books he has actually read, and those lists are never the same. Some months he read lots of nonfiction or books about soccer (sorry, football), other times he bought collections of letters by famous writers. One month he seemed preoccupied with sex between cousins. But it's always interesting.

This may seem too obvious to mention, but in order to sustain such a column, you have to read a lot of books. You also have to come up with stuff to say about them that will actually be worth reading. An ordinary person would end up with something like this: "This month I read 'Catcher in the Rye,' because my friend Julie liked it, and it was actually pretty decent. I read an issue of Cosmo, too, and that was... glossy." In the hands of some random jackass with a LiveJournal, this project could have truly sucked. Good thing Nick Hornby is a very witty guy, and he knows that the whole idea is fairly self-indulgent and, let's face it, nerdy. That's what makes it great, the little moments when you say "Yeah, I do that! I buy way more books than I read!" and then fantasize that you too will one day become a famous writer and have anecdotes that begin with "So, the night I met Kurt Vonnegut...."

Reading the columns is like sitting in a bar talking to an old friend who has moved to the city and become far more sophisticated than you. I have heard of approximately .07 percent of the books and writers mentioned, which is not a bad thing, since I plan on taking him up on some of his recommendations. For example, Hornby raves about "George and Sam" by Charlotte Moore, which is about the author and her two autistic sons, and the excerpt included in the book is beautiful. Hornby's endorsement means something, since he is both a writer and a father of an autistic child. But my favorite parts of these columns are about writing itself, and Hornby turns out to be something of a radical: he thinks writing and reading are supposed to be fun.

I particularly like his attack on the word "spare" as a high compliment in writing circles. "The truth is, there's nothing very utilitarian about fiction or its creation, and I suspect that people are desperate to make it sound like manly, back-breaking labor because it's such a wussy thing to do in the first place. The obsession with austerity is an attempt to compensate, to make writing seem like a real job, like farming, or logging... Go on, young writers-treat yourself to a joke, or an adverb! Spoil yourself!" Then he praises Dickens for his massive cast of characters and grandiose sentences, and reminds us to be grateful that Dickens never took any writing classes.

He has even less sympathy for most contemporary poetry. In a compliment to Tony Hoagland's poetry collection "What Narcissism Means to Me," he says, "If something doesn't give you even a shot at comprehension in the first couple of readings, then my motto is 'Fuck it,' but I never swore once. They can use that as a blurb, if they want. They should. Who wouldn't buy a poetry book that said 'I never swore once' on the cover? Everyone would know what it meant." Having suffered through scores of unintelligible poems in my college career, I can relate, and I was pleased to see that he was right. Hoagland's poem "Impossible Dream" appears in the book, and the thing makes sense. It's pretty and totally understandable. No footnotes required. Just words all lined up carefully and fit together. Hallelujah.

Underneath this humor is a serious and old-fashioned sense of dedication. Parts of these columns read like a diary-the parts where he is talking about browsing bookstores with his new baby or going to football matches-but others read like a manifesto: "The problem with short novels is that you can take liberties with them: you know you're going to set through them no matter what, so you never set aside the time or the commitment that a bigger book requires. I fucked (Tobias Wolff's) 'Old School' up; I should have read it in a sitting, but I didn't, and I never gave it a chance to leave its mark. We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too."

If next week you read here that I've reviewed "Red Badge of Courage," you'll know why: I am seeing if it still sucks. Maybe I just didn't give it a chance.

All profits from the sale of the book go to charities: half to TreeHouse, a London educational organization for autistic kids, and the other half to 826 NYC, a writing center for kids in Brooklyn. (Dave Eggers and others started 826 Valencia in California, and now there are 826's popping up in other cities. Google it-it's a fantastic idea.) Even if you're a compulsive book buyer, you can feel good about buying this one.