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Book by Book

Notes on Reading and Life

Michael Dirda

Holt Paperbacks

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ISBN10: 0805083383
ISBN13: 9780805083385

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192 Pages

$19.99

CA$21.99

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Once out of school, most people read for pleasure. But for some of us, there is an equally important reason that we read: to learn how to live. Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer prize–winning critic Michael Dirda shows how the wit, wisdom, and enchantment of the written word informs and enriches nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to love and death. From essential works for children to the handful of masterpieces that every reader should have at his command, Dirda offers us an opinionated, personal, and idiosyncratic account of what—and how—to draw meaning from what we read.
Organized by significant life events and brimming with quotations from great writers and thinkers, Book by Book showcases Dirda's capacious love for and understanding of books. Through his suggested readings and brief essays he draws us deeper into the classics, as well as lesser-known works of literature, history, and philosophy, always with an eye to how we might better understand our lives.

Reviews

Praise for Book by Book

"For any readaholic, the true tests of a book like this are three, and Dirda passes them all with flying colors. They are, that some of your favorite books and authors are included (wow! Howard Moss, Karen Joy Fowler and Georgette Heyer are all here); that when the last page is turned you find that you've compiled a huge list of books that you must read immediately because the author has made them sound so interesting (my list is long); and that you'd like to continue the conversation about books with the author."—Nancy Pearl, The Washington Post

"Dirda, a distinguished book critic at the Washington Post Book World, continues his campaign to educate readers. In his fourth book, this well-read, well-intentioned generalist presents a commonplace collection of excerpts from admired works gathered under topical headings. Dirda's selections are enticing, and he writes knowledgeably about diverse literary matters, but his commonplaces are in the self-improvement mode and are based on his belief that one learns invaluable lessons about life from reading. Aligning himself with such advocates of tolerance and reason as Thoreau and Isaiah Berlin, Dirda offers reflections on work and leisure, love and death. He also provides useful must-read lists fashioned in the great books tradition and spanning the literary universe from Cicero to Dr. Seuss."—Booklist

"Once we're finished reading all those books our teachers required us to read, where do we turn for counsel on reading and life? Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Dirda affectionately offers up this bouquet of thoughts and quotations from novels, poems, and essays as a guide to discovering the meaning of our experiences. Dirda's thoughtful little meditations conduct us through all aspects of life from work, leisure, and love to art, spiritual matters, and death and grief. He imagines the ideal guest room library filled with 'familiar, cozy, browsable, and soothing' books, ranging from the mysteries of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and G.K. Chesterton to the humor of P.G. Wodehouse and James Thurber and the maxims of François de La Rochefoucauld. In the section on love, Dirda provides a minicourse on the subject in the Western world, beginning with Sappho's poetry and coursing through Ovid and Horace, Tristan and Isolde, Dante's The Divine Comedy, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Philip Roth's The Dying Animal, and Zadie Smith's On Beauty. Finally, Dirda sums up the value of a life lived book by book: 'The beauty of words, the sound and fall of sentences, a writer's distinctive voice rising from the page—these, in the end, provide the greatest and most lasting pleasures of a reading life.' A lovingly crafted volume, this is recommended."—Library Journal

"Longtime Washington Post Book World staff writer and Pulitzer-winning critic Dirda writes a guide to reading and its life lessons ranging widely and pithily through the universal themes of learning, school, work, love, childhood and spiritual guidance. Dirda's message is simple: if reading is to be life enhancing, we need to focus our attention on books that are rewarding. Dirda encourages readers to forge a subjective and intimate relationship with books. He urges readers to spend less time on brand-name authors and more time discovering the books that truly excite them, paying attention to works from the past, including the classics. With humor and pragmatism, Dirda sets forth advice for building a hypothetical guest-room library: 'Ideally items should be family, cozy, browsable, above all soothing' (and include a Jane Austen novel). Throughout are eclectic snippets of writing gleaned from a lifetime's reading; Dirda draws on a notebook in which he has recorded striking quotations and passages, and his volume has the agreeable feeling of a commonplace book. Highly cultured yet never pretentious, Dirda's survey convincingly demonstrates what a wealth of life lessons—moral, emotional and aesthetic—a good library can contain. For those who enjoy books about reading, and for all those seeking to encourage others to read, Dirda's brief yet suggestive book will inspire."—Publishers Weekly

Reviews from Goodreads

BOOK EXCERPTS

Read an Excerpt

Preface

At Home in the World

Live-and-let-live over stand-or-die, high spirits over low, . . . love over charity, irreplaceable over interchangeable, divergence over concurrence, principle over interest, people over principle.

—Marvin...