He's back!

Even a rather ardent fan of The Believer Magazine like myself couldn't help but feel there was something missing from issues of these last many months. That something was Nick Hornby's mostly monthly column, Stuff I've Been Reading. But rumor had it that he would someday return, and now, that rumor is true. Hornby is back. Sure, he's encouraging the hip young reading demographic to read stuff like Austerity Britain, 1945-51, by David Kynaston, but buck up, youth. Everyone's got to graduate from Harry Potter sometime.

Frankly, he must have a civilizing effect, because it's the best issue I've seen in awhile. Although they're going to make you pay if you want to read all of Hornby's column, you can actually read some other great stuff for free on line. There's an excellent article on Leonard Woolf, pre-Virginia, in Ceylon by up and coming novelist Lev Grossman, for example. And in the non-free category, an article I haven't gotten all the way through yet by Annie Julia Wyman on one of the best books ever, Mimesis, by Erich Auerbach.

Also? Ninjas. Apparently, one may be closer than you think...