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

by Michael Dirda

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.

• ISBN10: 1605988448
• ISBN13: 9781605988443
• Publish Date: 23 February 2016 (first published 15 August 2015)
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Pegasus Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

First, I want to be clear: this 3 star rating is for the audiobook only.  I have a print copy of Browsings, but in an effort to pack more reading in, I borrowed the audiobook from my library to listen while driving to and from work.

The narrator, John Lescault, is not great.  He breathes very little, if any, personality into the reading of the essays.  As the book progresses, some life comes out here and there, but mostly there are large swaths of the narration that sound exactly like a computer generated voice is reading the text to you.  Because work ended for the holidays before the book did, I read the last few columns from my print edition.  Once I got Lescault's voice out of my head, I found the essays a lot more lively and enjoyable.  I suspect when I pick this up again some time in the future, when the soulless narration has faded from memory, I'll enjoy the essays a lot more.

Browsings is a collection of Dirda's columns, written over the course of a year, for The American Scholar.  He talks about a little of everything book related and his reading tastes are the very definition of eclectic, so there's likely something here for everyone who might enjoy reading about a bookish life.  My only disappointment – aside from the narration –was a lack of solid, factual information about collecting and living with books, but that's the result of my own hopeful expectations, not to any unmet promises on the part of the book itself.

An enjoyable book to dip in and out of, but definitely skip the audio version.