Amazon.co.uk:

In Nick Hornby's How To Be Good, Katie Carr is certainly trying to be. That's why she became a GP. That's why she cares about Third World debt and homelessness, and struggles to raise her children with a conscience. It's also why she puts up with her husband David, self-styled "Angriest Man in Holloway". But one fateful day, she finds herself in a Leeds car-park, having just slept with another man. What she doesn't yet realise is that her Fall from Grace is just the first step on a spiritual journey more torturous than the M25 at rush-hour. Because, prompted by his wife's actions, David is about to stop being Angry. He's about to become Good--not Guardian-reading, organic-food-eating good, but Good in the fashion of the Gospels. And that's no easier in modern-day Holloway than it was in ancient Israel.

I want to start a bookring with this book because I need an excuse to buy the german translation ;o) (which I've finished now and I enjoy it, although I think that it's not the best from Nick Hornby!!!...)

Participants:
1) Prospero / Köln, NRW, Deutschland
2) Lisa-B / Riedstadt, Hessen, Deutschland
3) Dani75 / Rudersberg, Baden-Württemberg, Deutschland
4) cinda-rella / Stuttgart/Esslingen, Baden-Wuerttemberg Deutschland
5) Xanocas / Santiago do Cacém, Alentejo, Portugal
6) Brice / Lyon, Rhone, Frankreich
7) belsize / Sélestat, ..., Frankreich
8) MarlenT / Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Deutschland
9) KatTo / Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Deutschland
10) hank-chinaski / OWL, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Deutschland
danach bitte zurück an mich (BalouP)

Released on Tuesday, September 16, 2003 at per Post in Berlin, Berlin Germany.

The Bookring is started and the book is on the way to its first station at Prospero...

Got it per Post today. Will read it asap - it's the first one on my TBR-pile. :-)

Frell - made an anonymous posting - well - I'll read it this week and then it'll be on his way. Really. Promised.

Was lost in the twilight zone and I made a very risky rescue-operation - very dangerous, indeed. So I'll read it this week and then it will go on his journey.

CAUGHT IN KÖLN GERMANY

It's a great book. Yes, it is. If you want to start reading Hornby - don't take this one. Take "About a boy" or the book about his favourite singles. Why? Because this book is darker and very cynical.
Try to imagine that someone was touched by an inner force and is now trying to do all the good he can. Sounds good? Well, Hornbys novel tells you a different story...

Released on Thursday, December 18, 2003 at Bookray/Bookring - send to a fellow bookcrosser in Köln, Germany Controlled Releases.

How to be good is on his way - I hope the post will send it straight to the next one on the list.

Received yesterday. Thanks, Prospero, for rescuing it, eventually :-) and BalouP for sharing it.

Although the book has some humor and some witty descriptions of a family on the brink of falling apart, and some very true insights in middle-class liberal society, I did not like How to be Good very much. Written from the sole perspective of the main character, her ramblings were quickly (after 60 pages or so) getting boring and sometimes even annoying, especially because they did not get nowhere.
I hope though that the others who'll read it will like it more. It is interesting after all to see how different we all comment on a book.

The book´s been in the mail a few days ago, haven´t been able to journal it until now. Will write more later.

Katie, a GP and therefore predestined to be a good person, tells her husband David that she wants to divorce him. This comes as a surprise to him, but he won´t give up without a fight. To annoy Katie he goes to see a healer to get rid of his backache. The healer, DJ GoodNews, is successful and soon David and he become best pals. Together they plan to make the world a better place and start their project in the neighborhood...

Very funny and quick to read!

kam heut mit der post, danke dani :-)

Released on Friday, April 09, 2004 at per Post/Übergabe an fellow bookcrosser in Esslingen, Baden-Württemberg Germany.

well - now i have the book for about 3 months and wasn't able to read it more than 20 pages... think hornby is just not my style - will send it to the next as soon as i get the adress...

Received it.
Will read asap.

It was a difficult start, but I finally did it.

It's a good book, but a sad story: it has an uncertain finish or maybe it's not that uncertain, I don't know. I want it to be different for me (as I think we all do).

Sent today to Brice (fio-dagua and Stergann have already read it).

Got it, soon more information.

Finished yesterday. Verry funny, but i prefered the other book of Hornby. I'll send it to belsize soon. Thanks

Just received it by post from Brice.

Released on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 at about 6:00:00 AM BX time (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) at Through the post to another bookcrosser MarlenT in Selestat, Alsace France.

RELEASE NOTES:

I couldn't really go into the book. I hope that you will enjoy it more than I did.

It was today in my mailbox. I'm very curoious on(?) it. Maybe afterwards my english is more fluent than it is at the moment.
Thanks baloup for the ring and belsize for the sending an the nice greetings.

20.01:
I read it and for an englisch book in relative short time. I don't have to write anymore about the story, because you guys have done already.
So my personal opinion:
The book is okay, it won't be one of my favourite books, but i won't miss reading it. You get somethings to think about. Where is your position in the range of a good good person? Are you only a good person, if you feel so and make good things? Or a person, who doesn't really is only good inside, but does good things, because it is common in the society or because you feel better afterwards? Or don't you care? It's a question I ask myself sometimes, maybe like many other persons. It's like: How can we live a lucky life, while knowing that thousands of people die every day in the third world? Do your moral allows that you are thinking only about you own fortune, because that's enough to bear and to care for? A book can't answer it, but you will think about it one more time.
And I don't like open ends, I would have wished something more clear about the future of the persons.

23.01.2005: Passed it to Hank. I wrote to Katto one week ago, but she didn't answer. Maybe hank, you can try it again, when you finished the book.

Got this from MarlenT at the Bielefeld meetup today, thanks! KatTo seems to have dropped out of the list? Anyway, always have been dying to know how to be good *gg*

Wow, what a book! It is my first Hornby (though Fever Pitch and High Fidelity have been on my TBR pile for ages...) and I'm absolutely taken away with it. Hornby manages to explore the basic dilemma of the individual person in post-modern society: People are constantly confronted with decisions what to make out of their lives, but every single decision they make turns out to be wrong. Even if their most treasured dreams came true, they'd materialize into a black, solid nightmare. But still, you're forced to decide for yourself, and although you cannot know what the consequences will be, you'll never have anyone else to blame for them than yourself. No wonder people would love to have something like an automatic navigation system for their lives, taking away the decisions by telling them to go straight ahead or to turn left next junction. But there is no such thing, and even if it were, it wouldn't help much in the end. In the end, there's nothing out there at all. A book like a Woody Allen movie.

It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.

BTW: Yes, the first 50 or so pages are boring and, at times, even annoying. Maybe that's because the irony is too subtle to be recognized at once. Thinking about it now that I've read all the book, I'm sure Hornby had a helluva time writing them;-)

Sent to KatTo by snailmail.

Hi! gele3sen und als schlechter befunden als die anderen Hornby-Romane. Dennoch ganz unterhaltsam. Sry, das das journalen so lange gedauert hat, war im Ausland (Praktikum) und danach hab ichs immer verpennt.

Geht an BalouP, wenn sie mir ihre Adresse geschrieben hat.

CAUGHT IN BOOKRING

sry, hatte mich eben nicht eingeloggt...it was me KaTo

Back at home since the day before yesterday!

Thanks to all participants!

Gute Reise und viel Spaß dem Finder mit dem Buch