Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books - Hardcover

Dirda, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1605988448 ISBN 13: 9781605988443

Publisher: Pegasus Books, 2015

Synopsis

Journalist Michael Kinsley has described Michael Dirda as “the best-read person in America,” then added “but he doesn’t rub it in.” Michael M. Thomas called him, in the New York Observer, “the best book critic in America." Nevertheless, no one named Michael was involved when Dirda was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his reviews in the Washington Post or when his recent book, On Conan Doyle, picked up an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America. Dirda's latest volume collects fifty of his poignant and puissant essays about “the literary life.” The result is a celebration, a fan’s notes, the perfect gift for any booklover or for one’s own bedtime browsing. For readers who admire Janet Flanner, Joseph Mitchell, Edmund Wilson and M.F. K. Fisher, this volume is the ideal literary companion. As admirers of his earlier books will expect, there are annotated lists galore—of perfect book titles, great adventure novels, favorite words, essential books about books, beloved children’s classics, and, not least, a revealing peek at the titles Michael keeps on his own nightstand.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and longtime book columnist for The Washington Post. He was once chosen by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the twenty-five smartest people in our nation’s capital (but, as Michael says, you have to consider the competition). He also writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement; the New York Review of Books and other literary journals. His previous publications include the memoir An Open Book, five collections of essays—Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book, Classics for Pleasure, Browsings (also availble from Pegasus Books)—and On Conan Doyle, for which he won an Edgar Award. A lifelong Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle fan, he was inducted into The Baker Street Irregulars in 2002. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

From the Back Cover

From Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda comes a collection of his most personal and engaging essays on the literary life-the perfect companion for any lover of books.
Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" (The Paris Review) and "the best book critic in America" (The New York Observer). In addition to the Pulitzer Prize he was awarded for his reviews in The Washington Post, he picked up an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for his most recent book, On Conan Doyle.
Dirda's latest volume collects fifty of his witty and wide-ranging reflections on literary journalism, book collecting, and the writers he loves. Reaching from the classics to the post-moderns, his allusions dance from Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and M. F. K. Fisher to Marilynne Robinson, Hunter S. Thompson, and David Foster Wallace. Dirda's topics are equally diverse: literary pets, the lost art of cursive writing, book inscriptions, the pleasures of science fiction conventions, author photographs, novelists in old age, Oberlin College, a year in Marseille, writer's block, and much more, not to overlook a few rants about Washington life and American culture. As admirers of his earlier books will expect, there are annotated lists galore-of perfect book titles, great adventure novels, favorite words, essential books about books, and beloved children's classics, as well as a revealing peek at the titles Michael keeps on his own nightstand.
Funny and erudite, occasionally poignant or angry, Browsings is a celebration of the reading life, a fan's notes, and the perfect gift for any booklover.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1605988448
• ISBN 13: 9781605988443
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336