Browsings : a year of reading, collecting, and living with books /
Dirda, Michael,author.
This volume collects fifty of Michael Dirda's 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. 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 peek at the titles Michael keeps on his own nightstand.
Mr. Zinsser, I presume -- Style is the man -- Armchair adventures -- Bookish pets -- Paper -- This is a column -- Scribble, scribble -- Books on books -- Text mess -- Twilight of an author -- Spring book sales -- Memories of Marseille -- Hail to thee, blithe spirit! -- Synonym toast -- Cowboys and clubmen -- Grades -- Anglophilia -- After the golden age -- Anthologies and collections -- Rocky Mountain low -- The fugitive -- Hot enough for you? -- Wonder books -- Readercon -- Aurora -- Out of print -- Thrift stories -- Musical chairs -- The evidence in the (book) case -- Charlottesville -- Then and now -- Mencken day -- New and old -- Dirty pictures -- Going, going, gone -- Castles in space -- Waving, not drowning -- Oberlin -- Jacques Barzun, and others -- What's in a name? -- Language matters -- "I'm done" -- Poe and Baudelaire -- In praise of small presses -- Christmas reading -- Books for the holidays -- Let us now praise Dover Books -- A dreamer's tale -- Money -- Book projects -- Ending up -- A positively, final appearance.
This volume collects fifty of Michael Dirda's 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. 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 peek at the titles Michael keeps on his own nightstand.
Dirda, Michael
Books and reading.