Is This OCD? [Books]

When I finish a good book I sincerely want to begin reading all other books by that author. To a degree, I’m sure everyone feels this. But I really want to read them all–and quickly thereafter. At any time, I likely have 25-30 books on my “to read” list. This is especially a problem when the author is prolific, say an Elmore Leonard or a P.G. Wodehouse. Do I reassess my list? Put these potentially great books way back at the end? Life is full of struggles.

I’m currently experiencing this problem with Nick Hornby. Fever Pitch (a humorous look at Hornby’s own soccer fanaticism) was great. So too was A Long Way Down (a humorous look at suicide, really)–though there is no comparing the two. Over the Christmas holiday, I read How To Be Good (a humorous look at marriage and love). I’m not too conflicted about reading High Fidelity or About a Boy in the short term because I’ve seen the movies. But what about the others? (A Long Way Down and How To Be Good both moved to the front of the list back in December.) Anyway, I recommend How To Be Good.

I had a similar though less difficult decision with Erik Larson’s most recent book, Thunderstruck. See I really liked Larson’s last book, The Devil in the White City–about the concurrent events of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and a serial murderer loose in the city. I was less interested in Thunderstruck because it centers on Guglielmo Marconi’s efforts to transmit wireless radio signals across the Atlantic and an alleged murderer fleeing across the Atlantic to escape justice. Larson tells the story with the same skill and verve as his previous book, but, quite simply, I don’t like Marconi. I’m a Tesla fan. As such I don’t appreciate the Marconi’s “invention.” I won’t bore you with all the details (a summary of which is nicely detailed on Tesla’s wikipedia page). Anyway, other than continually lauding Marconi (in fairness to Larson, he does detail some of Marconi’s shortcomings–though the dispute with Tesla goes unmentioned), the book is great.

Now, do I read Larson’s Isaac’s Storm, another Hornby book, or something else? I think something else.