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Book. 8vo-over 7¾-9¾" tall. Hardcover, frontispiece, x, 216 pp., illustrated jacket. Excellent condition. Personal essays from the Washington Post Book World.

Book. 8vo-over 7¾-9¾" tall. Hardcover, frontispiece, x, 216 pp., illustrated jacket. Excellent condition. Personal essays from the Washington Post Book World.

Size: 6x0x9; Inscribed by author; 216 clean, unmarked, tight pages; cover is

Size: 6x0x9; Inscribed by author; 216 clean, unmarked, tight pages; cover is clean and sturdy; very light shelf and corner wear on dust jacket; book is slightly skewed from storage.

Size: 6x1x10; Inscribed by Michael Dirda on title page. Hardcover and dust jacket. Good binding and cover. Light wear. Clean, unmarked pages. *Autographed by author. *

Size: 6x1x10; Inscribed by Michael Dirda on title page. Hardcover and dust jacket. Good binding and cover. Light wear. Clean, unmarked pages. *Autographed by author. *

216 pages. Frontis illus. Signed and inscribed by the author. This volume

216 pages. Frontis illus. Signed and inscribed by the author. This volume collects Dirda's popular column published in the Washington Post Book World in the 1990s. Throughout, Dirda shares his passion for reading with humor, scholarship, and imagination. He's full of ideas about what to read next, and brings lively infatuation to the art of the book review. Intimate, humorous, and insightful, Readings is a collection of classic essays and reviews by Michael Dirda, book critic of the Washington Post and winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. From a first reading of Beckett and Faulkner at the feet of an inspirational high-school English teacher to a meeting of the P. G. Wodehouse Society, from an obsession with Nabokov's Lolita to the discovery of the Japanese epic The Tale of Genji, these essays chronicle a lifetime of literary enjoyment. Michael Dirda (born 1948) is a book critic for the Washington Post. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Having studied at Oberlin College for his undergraduate degree in 1970, Dirda took an M.A. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1977 from Cornell University in comparative literature. In 1978 Dirda started writing for the Washington Post; in 1993 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his criticism. Currently, he is a book columnist for the Post. This volume collects Dirda's popular column published in the Washington Post Book World in the 1990s. Since 1993 Washington Post Book World has published a monthly column by Michael Dirda called "Readings." Personal, erudite, serious, and sometimes playful, these columns cover a variety of subjects: classics in translation, intellectual history, children's books, fantasy and crime fiction, American and European literature, poetry, innovative writing, the joys of collecting first editions, rediscovering neglected novels, ghost stories, teaching writing, and the challenges of parenthood and life in general. Dirda is a writer's reader and a reader's writer. He is an impeccable guide to good reading from the light, he loves P. G. Wodehouse, to scholarly esoterica. His columns are always worth a pause, always worth reading, always worth coming back to. Readings presents his most memorable essays, including "The Crime of His Life" (a youthful caper), "Bookman's Saturday" (the scheming of a book collector), "Weekend with Wodehouse, " "Mr. Wright" (an exemplary high school teacher), "Listening to My Father, " "Turning Fifty, " and "Millennial Readings." This is a book to keep on your bedside for ending the day with pleasurable reading. Michael Dirda is a writer and senior editor for Washington Post Book World. For three years he was a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications. In 1993 Dirda received the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. Derived from a Kirkus review: A delightful compendium of Dirda's most memorable Washington Post Book World essays revels in seven years' worth of bibliophilic passion. Although the 46 “literary entertainments” collected here range widely in topic and in tone, Dirda's hearty enthusiasm and good-natured bookishness stands at the forefront of his writing. From pulp fiction to serious literature, children's books to erotica, ghost stories to classics in translation, Dirda appears to have read more books—and to remember them in awe-inspiring detail—than most libraries contain. Many of the essays contain lists of little-known and forgotten novels with brief synopses of their contents, and these simple gifts leave one breathless with reverence for the man who read, recommended, and loved these countless titles. Dirda's erudition is obvious throughout. His response to required reading in high school and his hilarious suggestions to encourage children to read by forbidding them the classics reveal a man whose tongue may be firmly in his cheek but whose heart and mind never seem to stray from the joys of the...