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Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal, about a fortysomething pottery teacher who has an affair with a fifteen-year-old pupil, was moving along nicely until a character starts talking about football. He tells a teaching colleague that he’s been to see Arsenal, and that “Arsenal won Liverpool 3-0.” Readers of this column will have realized by now that I know almost nothing about anything, but if I were forced to declare one area of expertise, it would be what people say to each other after football matches. It’s not much, I know, but it’s mine. And I am positive that no one has ever said “Arsenal won Liverpool 3-0” in the entire history of either Arsenal Football Club or the English league. “Beat,” thrashed,” “did” or “done,” “trounced,” “thumped,” “shat all over,” “walloped,” etc., yes; “won,” emphatically, no. And I think that my dismay and disbelief then led me to question other things, and the fabric of the novel started to unravel a little. … I like Zoë Heller’s writing, and this book has a terrific narrative voice that recalls Alan Bennett’s work; I just wish I wasn’t so picky. This is how picky I am. You know the Arsenal bit? It wasn’t just the unconvincing demotic I objected to; it was the score. Arsenal haven’t beaten Liverpool 3-0 at Highbury since 1991. What chance did the poor woman have?

- Nick Hornby in The Polysyllabic Spree, one of several collections of his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns from The Believer magazine.

I’ve known of this book for a long time. I’ve picked it up at bookstores. I’ve held it, flipped through it. I’ve always set it down. Why? The truest and most foolish reason is that I have this aversion to music groups that wear any sort of uniform. So I’ve never given The Polyphonic Spree a chance. The title of The Polysyllabic Spree forced me to think of The Polyphonic Spree. Therefore, I couldn’t give The Polysyllabic Spree a real chance. Foolish and true. True and foolish. More foolish still since I loved High Fidelity and found Juliet, Naked engrossing enough to post “Hornby ≠ Tolstoy. And yet …” back in February.

Now, somehow, after only a few pages, The Polysyllabic Spree has won me over so thoroughly that I’m feeling guilty for never giving The Polyphonic Spree a chance.

This could happen to you.

The only reason the book is in my house is that I tried and failed to talk someone into letting my son shoot baskets at his school’s gym today. Having failed, I fell into talking with a man who’s teaching a summer class at the school. A basketball class. But he’s also a writer.

Soon, we’d gone from “Sorry. No. We have to close up.” about shooting hoops and moved on to Malcolm Gladwell, Carl Sagan, the value of prose that’s accessible without being dumb, and then ultimately on to the accessible-without-being-dumb Nick Hornby.

The man recommended the books of Hornby’s columns so enthusiastically that I hit the library on the way home. I scored The Polysyllabic Spree and Shakespeare Wrote For Money. And now, having evangelized to the two or three people on Earth who have denied themselves these books because of lunatic prejudice against uniformed musicians, I would like to go back to my reading and then on to bed.