Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2015
336 pages
Genre: Essays
Publication Information
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.<
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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.
"Starred Review. Browsings is as much about living with books, about serendipitous discovery, as about the boundless pleasures of reading. Dirda's comradely essays are unfailingly informative and amusing, punctuated with poignant asides on the aging artist and paeans to great literary scholars. His almost single-minded passion, the exhilaration of a life in literature, glows on every page." - Kirkus
"Dirda is gently self-deprecating about his writing and enthusiasms, but his humility is contradicted by his huge roster of literary acquaintances, vast knowledge of both popular and literary fiction, and omnivorous tastes as a reader." - Publishers Weekly
"Although Dirda recommends reading only two or three of his pieces at a time, his exuberance is infectious, and the book is hard to put down. Clearly this author recognizes that the most important quality of a book is the pleasure it gives." - Library Journal
"In remembering and reflecting upon his own first excitements as a reader, Dirda is infectious." - Harper's Magazine
"A brief, elegant reflection. For so many years Dirda has been such an insightful guide to literatures past and present." - Los Angeles Times
"Charming." - The Times Literary Supplement
"Michael Dirda is one of the great book reviewers of our age. It is not merely that his writing is so lucid and intelligent or that his taste is so inclusive but discerning." - Dana Gioia, poet and former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts
"Imagine having a really unbelievably well-read friend, who likes the same stuff that you do but is able to articulate why he loves it so much better than you can. And while explaining it points you at a hundred books and authors you'd love but haven't heard of or have never got around to reading. And who makes you feel, by the end of his explanation, as if you've been inaugurated into a secret society of people who love what can be done with words. That's who Michael Dirda is, and that's what this book does." - Neil Gaiman
"Michael Dirda, bookman extraordinaire, has elevated the indulgent pleasures of browsing to the quality of high art. A marvelous collection for serious book lovers, common readers and all of us who take a guilty delight in the gossip of literature. " - Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading
"Pleasure, provocation, passion - just some of the words that came to my mind and through my heart as I perused this book." - Azar Nafisi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Republic of Imagination
"Michael Dirda's witty essays on books and bookishness are as addictive as literary potato chips - you simply cannot stop with just one. Not only do they whet your appetite for the many volumes he so engagingly recommends, they give you a craving for more of Dirda's own quirky personality. He is our own Montaigne and our Hazlitt. I want more!" - Thomas Mann, author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research
This information about Browsings was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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, four collections of essays - Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book, and Classics for Pleasure - 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.
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