Martha Peake Female, 25. Catania, Italy

Few other English writers could delight me as Hornby. He’s able to create characters by taking a picture of their weak points, even those you don’t want to see or admit. In this case, the protagonists of the story are four suicidal characters seeming to have very different backgrounds and personalities. They have each come to jump to their death, but none of them will complete the act of suicide. And Hornby confirms his depth of his death concept without drowning in a vat of sap or annoying.

As usual, the story has not an ending. There’s not a lesson to teach about life and neither a good way or a bad one. There’s just life to live or not.

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"Suicide wasn't invented for people like this. It was invented for people like Virginia Woolf and Nick Drake. And me. Suicide was supposed to be cool."

The strangest thing is not the case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but the way the story is structured. Even if Mr Utterson can be considered a detective, the story doesn't really start like a detective fiction with a case to be solved. It is a dream driving the sleeper (and the reader) into a metaphysical confusing world.

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"I feel very strongly about putting questions. It partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name..."

Profound psychological study in human relationships and individual growth with an interesting historical background (the history of Jews in England) treated with sympathy and understanding. Sometimes Eliot injects characters with too much admiration and compassion. The result is a lack of balance.

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"What name doth Joy most borrow when life is fair?To-morrow. What name doth best fit Sorrow in young despair? To-morrow"

“I learned that Britain had the worst teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, which by the way means we have the highest. It took me a while to realize that. For a moment I thought they might mean it the other way, that our teen pregnancy rates were low and the Prime Minister wanted us to do better”

Funny (Sam has awesome and imaginary conversations with his hero Tony Hawk whose poster is in his room), wise (Hornby deals with teen pregnancy) and clever. As usual.

What Hornby does is more than making a list of stuff he has read. He shares his reading experience and relays everything in such a conversational tone that makes it all sound so natural. This book is funny, even if sometimes Hornby contradicts himself and he doesn't get deeper than his rivals in critical writing.

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"The young Flaubert wasn't very rock and roll. He was, on this evidence, kind of a prissy, nerdy kid..."

It's a anthology of music criticism, but also a collection of short essays about how music and people can shape and change over time. I don't totally agree with Dave Eggers:even if I listen to a song over and over, I don't have to 'solve' it. On the contrary, I discover new ideas about it.

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"All sorts of pieces of music are constantly being described as 'sexy', but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'd want them to accompany love-making"

Philosophy has a great deal to do with words. Austin's utterances classification (verdictives, exercitives, commissive...) is useful to demonstrate how and when speech acts succeed or fail. Behabitives, especially compliments which do not secure something as good, is still a matter of philosophical inquiry. But the way in which all these questions are explained - lectures -is fragmentary, a little boring and difficult to read and digest.