Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life

by Michael Dirda

Hardcover, 2006

Status

Available

Call number

028.9

Genres

Nonfiction

General Nonfiction

All Topics

Collection

Your library

Publication

Henry Holt and Co. (2006), Hardcover, 192 pages

Description

A Pulitzer Prize-winning critic's often surprising meditation on those places where life and books intersect and what might be learned from both Once out of school, most of us read for pleasure.Yet there is another equally important, though often overlooked, reason that we read: to learn how to live. Though books have always been understood as life-teachers, the exact way in which they instruct, cajole, and convince remains a subject of some mystery. 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 can inform and enrich nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to love and death. Organized by significant life events and abounding with quotations from great writers and thinkers,Book by Book showcases Dirda's considerable knowledge, which he wears lightly. Favoring showing rather than telling, Dirda draws the reader deeper into the classics, as well as lesser-known works of literature, history, and philosophy, always with an eye to what is relevant to how we might better understand our lives.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member John

Book by Book is a good read from a man who loves to read, loves writing in almost all genres, and who thinks seriously about the connections between reading and life, how the former might inform or reflect, and in some cases even guide the latter. The book is a series of essays, thoughts,

meditations and recommended reading lists covering fiction, non-fiction, biography, history, philosophy, social commentators, music, art, and children's literature.

The book is also a compendium of aphorisms culled by Dirda over a lifetime of reading, various of which will appeal to various readers in different ways, or not at all, as is the way with personal commonplace quotations. One I particularly liked from G.K.Chesterton: "No real patriot would ever say, My country right or wrong. It is like saying, My mother, drunk or sober."

There is a lot to absorb in this little book. It is worth a re-read.

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LibraryThing member damcg63

Mr Dirda leads us on a wonderful tour of the books that are the building blocks of the enlightened life. It is an interesting read that is organized by the stages and events of our lives. It is supplemented by pages full of quotes and lists - the stuff of delight for a reader. This is one to keep

close to your reading chair or on the nightstand in your guest room. A book to come back to several times.

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LibraryThing member sriemann

I loved this book immensely, for the lists and recommendations and finding out about all kinds of authors I hadn't heard of before. In fact, there are so many nice lists and recommendations, that I am going to buy a copy of the book. (when one uses more than 20 paper bits to mark a page to go back

to for referral, I think it means one should own the book)

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LibraryThing member jwhenderson

For some writers, blogs serve as contemporary versions of commonplace books. The classic is Auden's A Certain World which was the first commonplace book that I discovered almost forty years ago. It was a very personal anthology that included adages, short excerpts, poems, and more. Auden organized

it alphabetically by categories with his own comments included in some, always brief, as a record of his own thoughts.
My favorite commonplace book is Michael Dirda's own contribution, Book By Book. It is a book-lover's delight and has led me down many trails that I visit and revisit. He shares his personal thoughts about books in a topical way with chapters on "Work and Leisure", "The Book of Love", "Matters of the Spirit", and "Last Things". My favorite sections include "The Interior Library" where he recommends an eclectic mix of reading aimed at getting you away from the bestseller list (never a problem for me) and into a wide variety of books including fantasy fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and intellectual history (the last is a favorite of mine). I also enjoyed "The Pleasures of Learning" where he discusses a foundation of great books (Homer, et. al.) and both books and methods of education. He even includes a chapter, "Sight s and Sounds", that focuses on art and music. It is likely his personal music recommendations include a few of your favorites. Through all his recommendations he includes valuable pithy sayings on which you may choose to meditate.
While Dirda recommends Auden, of course and Cyril Connolly's An Unquiet Grave; I have taken up the challenge of one of my favorite authors, D. J. Enright. So it is with delight that I am exploring, slowly savoring, his own " kind of a commonplace book", Interplay. It is here that I will be able to meditate on the pleasures of reading, mulling both thoughts and words - perhaps cogitating some new ones of my own.

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LibraryThing member Cecilturtle

A disappointing jumble of quotations, impressions, lists and advice. In his prologue, Dirda speaks of world literature but solely dwells on a Western (white male) anglo-centric corpus. Each chapter, representing a theme, contains his book choices but with little explanation for each, other than

jejune adjectives as "dazzling" or "unfairly ignored" - the same adjectives that he condemns as being too general in critiques. Finally some of his points of view are startlingly naive, namely his admonition that one should take the media at face-value to understand the world (where's the critical thinking behind that statement?). There are a few nuggets of wisdom, but they are hard to find!

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LibraryThing member Matke

In this rambling but engaging set of short essays on the most varied of topics, written like a well-edited commonplace book, Dirda again shows us that reading can be the greatest of pleasures, both a device to expand the imagination and a tool to help us discover how to deal with life. Not a book

to read once and forget about, this is a resource to be consulted often, if only for the refreshment Dirda himself provides.

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LibraryThing member Dorritt

You've heard the aphorism: "Based solely on the books in your library, I knew we were going to be best friends"? Michael Dirda's a Pulitzer Prize winning Book Critic who I've never met except through his frequent contributions to the Washington Post's Book World, but based on this short memoir,

we'd definitely hit it off.

Reading this felt like hanging out with a group of old college friends, exchanging ideas and anecdotes about life, religion, art, and literature. Not in a wine and cheese way, but in a beer and chips way, with everyone interrupting each other, quotes from famous books/authors offered as supporting evidence, raised voices, lots of gesticulating, and plenty of anecdotes and digressions. ("They made us read Mary Wollencraft in college - ugh!"; "I went from Nancy Drew straight to Agatha Christie, but my next stop definitely wasn't Crime & Punishment!";"Where's Poe? How can you compile a list of the greatest horror stories without a single Poe?")

The book is a collection of reflective essays, quotes, and lists, and is definitely best read with a pencil at hand, because half the fun is interacting with the text: agreeing, disagreeing, making connections, marking off books already read and books to add to your reading list, etc. Only alert I'll issue to potential readers is that the author does presume a good grounding in European/American humanities. If you've attended a decent US/European liberal arts college or are an autodidact, however, you should be fine.

If you're ever in Virginia, Michael Dirda, my college buddies and will have a beer standing by with your name on it!

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LibraryThing member CarltonC

A vastly enjoyable read for book lovers.
I have added so many books to my TBR pile, agreed with many of his assessments and disagreed with a few.

Dirda's objective, which I thought that he achieves:
We turn to books in the hope of better understanding our selves and better engaging with the meaning

of our experiences. Let me say, right off, that I believe a work of art is primarily concerned with the creation of beauty, whether through words, colors, shapes, sounds, or movement. But it is impossible to read serious novels, poetry, essays, and biographies without also growing convinced that they gradually enlarge our minds, refine our spirits, make us more sensitive and understanding.

Full of great quotes of which possibly my favourite is:
The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.. . . Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our mind, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired, which we are forced to make use of.—Simone Weil

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LibraryThing member danatdtms

I enjoyed reading Book by Book though it constantly reminded me of how little a dent I have made in pursuit of a basic appreciation of literature. It shall serve as a good reference on my bookshelf.

LibraryThing member kslade

Good little book on lifetime reading, philosophy, etc. Makes you think about why you are reading.

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