#michael dirda

[dk-thrive]

Effective prose, in truth, doesn’t resemble conversation. It’s more like sculpting with clay. You start with an inchoate mass, shape it a bit, hate the result, start over, try this, try that, give up, slink away in disgust, come back, work some more and eventually end up with something that looks vaguely like a pot or an essay.

— Michael Dirda, "Stop trying to make language ‘funner.’ Grammar rules exist for a reason." A review of Anne Curzan’s book “Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words.” (Washington Post, April 25, 2024)

[tonyburgessblog]

Quote Of The Day

Many cultures believe that on a certain day – Halloween, the Irish Samhain Eve, Mexico’s ‘Dia de los Muertos’ – the veil between this world and the next is especially thin. Michael Dirda

[letterful]

If people know any portion of Herodotus, they almost certainly know the story of Croesus, the immensely rich king of the Lydians, who asked the oracles at Delphi whether he should go to war against the Persians: “The answers both oracles gave to the question were perfectly consistent with each other: they told Croesus that if he made war on the Persians, he would destroy a great empire.” Thus reassured, Croesus attacked and was utterly routed: The empire he would destroy was his own. Herodotus is a treasure chest of such stories and of what he calls thomata, or wonders. He tells us about temple prostitutes in Babylon, the Scythians’ use of cannabis to get high, fathers inadvertently feasting on the flesh of their own sons; he shows us the oases of North Africa (the Ethiopians, he says, “are the tallest and most attractive people in the world”), giant ants that bring up gold from underground, and Amazons who must first kill a man before they can marry; we even glimpse a high-born Persian who cuts off his nose and ears to accomplish a daring undercover military operation, a circumnavigation of Africa, and a foolish king so infatuated with his wife’s beauty that he insists that one of his counselors see her naked. With his usual charm, Herodotus notes that there are so many aromatic spices in Arabia that the entire country “gives off a wonderfully pleasant smell.” His book’s famous second chapter alone, a long excursus on Egypt, describes the use of mosquito netting, how to hunt a crocodile, the legend of Helen in Egypt, the building of pyramids, and three ways to embalm a corpse. After the mortuarial details, he gruesomely adds, “When the wife of an eminent man dies, or any woman who was particularly beautiful or famous, the body is not handed over to the embalmers straight away. They wait three or four days before doing so. The reason for this is to stop the embalmers having sex with the women.”

— MICHAEL DIRDA, from Bound to Please.

[justforbooks]

Paul Auster, American author of The New York Trilogy, dies aged 77

The writer of The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and 4 3 2 1 – known for his stylised postmodernist fiction – has died from complications of lung cancer

Paul Auster, the author of 34 books including the acclaimed New York Trilogy, has died aged 77.

The author died on Tuesday due to complications from lung cancer, his friend and fellow author Jacki Lyden confirmed to the Guardian.

Auster became known for his “highly stylised, quirkily riddlesome postmodernist fiction in which narrators are rarely other than unreliable and the bedrock of plot is continually shifting,” the novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote in 2010.

His stories often play with themes of coincidence, chance and fate. Many of his protagonists are writers themselves, and his body of work is self-referential, with characters from early novels appearing again in later ones.

“Auster has established one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature,” wrote critic Michael Dirda in 2008. “His narrative voice is as hypnotic as that of the Ancient Mariner. Start one of his books and by page two you cannot choose but hear.”

The author was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947. According to Auster, his writing life began at the age of eight when he missed out on getting an autograph from his baseball hero, Willie Mays, because neither he nor his parents had carried a pencil to the game. From then on, he took a pencil everywhere. “If there’s a pencil in your pocket, there’s a good chance that one day you’ll feel tempted to start using it,” he wrote in a 1995 essay.

While hiking during a summer camp aged 14, Auster witnessed a boy inches away from him getting struck by lightning and dying instantly – an event that he said “absolutely changed” his life and that he thought about “every day”. Chance, “understandably, became a recurring theme in his fiction,” wrote the critic Laura Miller in 2017. A similar incident occurs in Auster’s 2017 Booker-shortlisted novel 4 3 2 1: one of the book’s four versions of protagonist Archie Ferguson runs under a tree at a summer camp and is killed by a falling branch when lightning strikes.

Auster studied at Columbia University before moving to Paris in the early 1970s, where he worked a variety of jobs, including translation, and lived with his “on-again off-again” girlfriend, the writer Lydia Davis, whom he had met while at college. In 1974, they returned to the US and married. In 1977, the couple had a son, Daniel, but separated shortly afterwards.

In January 1979, Auster’s father, Samuel, died, and the event became the seed for the writer’s first memoir, The Invention of Solitude, published in 1982. In it, Auster revealed that his paternal grandfather was shot and killed by his grandmother, who was acquitted on grounds of insanity. “A boy cannot live through this kind of thing without being affected by it as a man,” Auster wrote in reference to his father, with whom he described himself having an “un-movable relationship, cut off from each other on opposite sides of a wall”.

Auster’s breakthrough came with the 1985 publication of City of Glass, the first novel in his New York trilogy. While the books are ostensibly mystery stories, Auster wielded the form to ask existential questions about identity. “The more [Auster’s detectives] stalk their eccentric quarry, the more they seem actually to be stalking the Big Questions – the implications of authorship, the enigmas of epistemology, the veils and masks of language,” wrote the critic and screenwriter Stephen Schiff in 1987.

Auster published regularly throughout the 80s, 90s and 00s, writing more than a dozen novels including Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002) and Oracle Night (2003). He also became involved in film, writing the screenplay for Smoke, directed by Wayne Wang, for which he won the Independent Spirit award for best first screenplay in 1995.

In 1981, Auster met the writer Siri Hustvedt and they married the following year. In 1987 they had a daughter, Sophie, who became a singer and actor. Auster’s 1992 novel Leviathan, about a man who accidentally blows himself up, features a character called Iris Vegan, who is the heroine of Hustvedt’s first novel, The Blindfold.

Auster was better known in Europe than in his native United States: “Merely a bestselling author in these parts,” read a 2007 New York magazine article, “Auster is a rock star in Paris.” In 2006, he was awarded Spain’s Prince of Asturias prize for literature, and in 1993 he was given the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan. He was also a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In April 2022, Auster and Davis’s son, Daniel, died from a drug overdose. In March 2023, Hustvedt revealed that Auster was being treated for cancer after having been diagnosed the previous December. His final novel, Baumgartner, about a widowed septuagenarian writer, was published in October.

Auster is survived by Hustvedt, their daughter Sophie Auster, his sister Janet Auster, and a grandson.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[hamliet]

hello hamliet👋 you really inspired me to pick up dostoevsky after a long time of wanting to and i recently finished demons! first off: jesus fucking christ. second, i wanted to ask if you have any recommendations on analysis resources? i think you mentioned someone said something about a "most harrowing scene in literature" that sounded very interesting. it's an amazing book, i think i haven't touched something built so complex and with such particular nuances in a long time, if ever, so thanks for being super into dostoevsky i guess SKDHSK, cheers!

HAHAHA that sure is a fair reaction. And I love how you phrase this:

i think i haven't touched something built so complex and with such particular nuances in a long time, if ever

Same Anon same.

That quote about it being the most harrowing is from Michael Dirda here. He's a Pulitzer Prize wining literary critic.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote a paper on it back in 1978 ("The Tragic Vision of the Possessed"), and Camus talked extensively about Kirllov in Myth of Sisyphus. I would also Alexandra Rudicina's "Crime and Myth: The Archetypal Pattern of Rebirth in Three Novels of Dostoevsky" is a good read, though it also addresses C&P and The Brothers Karamazov. And feel free to engage in discussions of your own, and to come back here!

[thecrenellations]

okay, trying to go for at least one answer that’s funny because it’s extremely expected and one that’s funny because it’s unexpected???

2 3 6 12 21 25

these are the questions.

I think you succeeded, my anonymous inquisitor! (I laughed/smiled when I read the questions.)

2. Did you reread anything? What? YES, I DID! I was going to provide some numbers for this and got a little lost in the details, but half of the individual books I read this year were ones I've read before, I read some of those books (Lion Hunters) multiple times, and then I went and reread a bunch of the ones that were new to me, especially the Lymond Chronicles! The Game of Kings wins, I think. No, I know. I love rereading, and my favorite stories are the kind that make me love it more!

3. What were your top five books of the year? In alphabetical order, with an only-one-book-per-series restriction and my apologies to a few books I liked nearly as much or the same amount as these ones: The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan, The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor, A Power Unbound by Freya Marske, and Stateless by Elizabeth Wein.

6. Was there anything you meant to read but never got to? I should have thought to split up my answers, but yes! I remembered a few of the nonfiction ones: The Power of Babel by John McWhorter, Ducks by Kate Beaton, Caring For Your Books by Michael Dirda, Karachi Vice by Samira Shackle, and a biography of John Gielgud

12. Any books that disappointed you? Certain aspects of the Lymond Chronicles, the new-reading highlight of my year, disappointed me in ways that I have also found deeply interesting to talk and think about, and I felt that Wild Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the Natural World did not quite deserve its title. Get wilder and more curious!

21. Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama? These questions are from 2019, so I suppose they predate booktok becoming a major thing! But I certainly watched Claire run around Schuler books and, dramatically, cause The Thief and Code Name Verity to sell out!

At @red-sea-itinerary, the capital of booklr, our polls have been very dramatic, and an author has weighed in. We should all remember Abreha's palace's water clock. Nearly everyone prefers coffee with Turunesh over kingship and no one thinks Medraut should have the latter. Birds. And Telemakos is taller than Lleu!!!

25. What reading goals do you have for next year? To get around to a few of those books in 6, to read more nonfiction (I think trying more via audiobook would help), to read more diversely in terms of authors (including time periods), and to read another series that's new to me! Maybe to help poke a certain loose book club into meeting again? To have fun and escape and think and learn. Reading was enough of a challenge during and after college that I still feel delighted and grateful that I've been reading regularly and finding new books I love. :)

[daimonclub]

Halloween great quotes

Halloween great quotes and aphorisms Halloween great quotes and aphorisms, 50 famous and amazing ideas for your pleasure by the World of English or English-culture.com blog Halloween for the year 2022 is celebrated/observed on Monday, October 31st. What the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness – for then The spirits of the dead, who stood In life before thee, are again In death around thee, and their will Shall overshadow thee; be still. Edgar Allan Poe If human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Doug Coupland The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. H P Lovecraft Be wary then; best safety lies in fear. William Shakespeare Treats and tricks. Witch broomsticks. Jack-o-lanterns Lick their lips. Crows and cats. Vampire bats. Capes and fangs And pointed hats. Werewolves howl. Phantoms prowl. Halloween’s Upon us now. Richelle E. Goodrich It’s Halloween, The night we all play, Trick or treat, We won’t go away. Be we ghoul or goblin, ghost, We’ll knock on your door, To see who scares you the most. Anthony T.Hincks Halloween shadows played upon the walls of the houses. In the sky the Halloween moon raced in and out of the clouds. The Halloween wind was blowing, not a blasting of wind but a right-sized swelling, falling, and gushing of wind. It was a lovely and exciting night, exactly the kind of night Halloween should be.” Eleanor Estes The jack-o-lantern follows me with tapered, glowing eyes. His yellow teeth grin evily. His cackle I despise. But I shall have the final laugh when Halloween is through. This pumpkin king I’ll split in half to make a pie for two.” Richelle E. Goodrich There is magic in the night when pumpkins glow by moonlight. Anonymous Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen. Voices whisper in the trees, “Tonight is Halloween!” Dexter Kozen On Hallows Eve, we witches meet to broil and bubble tasty treats like goblin thumbs with venom dip, crisp bat wings, and fried fingertips. Richelle E. Goodrich Witch and ghost make merry on this last of dear October’s days. Author Unknown

Halloween quotes by English-culture Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Christmas and the others can end up making you sad, because you know you should be happy. But on Halloween you get to become anything that you want to be” Ava Dellaira Halloween is fun, but it wasn't always my favorite holiday. I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Tobin Bell Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. William Shakespeare When witches go riding, and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers, ‘tis near Halloween. Author Unknown We are born from the star dust, and there we have to come back, under some nice carpets, to enjoy some cheerful Halloween parties! Carl William Brown Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Fear has many eyes and can see things underground. Miguel de Cervantes There is nothing that gives more assurance than a mask. Colette On ol' Halloween Night These monsters join the living If they had it their way They'd stay until Thanksgiving. Casey Browning Halloween wraps fear in innocence, As though it were a slightly sour sweet. Let terror, then, be turned into a treat... Nicholas Gordon Halloween isn't the only time for ghosts and ghost stories. In Victorian Britain, spooky winter's tales were part of the Christmas season, often told after dinner, over port or coffee. Michael Dirda Every Halloween for six years, I was a Ninja Turtle, and Mikey was my favorite. The turtles really made me who I am today. They got me into martial arts, meditation, surfing, skateboarding; big time influence on who I am today. Greg Cipes Halloween is bigger than Christmas in America. I've experienced it in New York, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., and if you're in the right neighbourhood, every house is decorated with spooky ghosts, spider webs, and jack-o-lanterns. Rhys Darby

Halloween best quotes ever If ever there was a holiday that deserves to be commercialized, it's Halloween. We haven't taken it away from kids. We've just expanded it so that the kid in adults can enjoy it, too. Cassandra Peterson Where there is no imagination there is no horror. Arthur Conan Doyle People value Halloween, like Valentine's Day, because they can tell themselves that it's not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim. Amity Shlaes This Halloween the most popular mask is the Arnold Schwarzenegger mask. And the best part? With a mouth full of candy you will sound just like him. Conan O'Brien On Halloween, kids get to assume, for one night the outward forms of their innermost dread, and they're also allowed to take candy from strangers - the scariest thing of all. Kate Christensen Charlie Brown is the one person I identify with. C.B. is such a loser. He wasn't even the star of his own Halloween special. Chris Rock Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold. Judith Olney True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about but few have seen. Author Unknown They that are born on Halloween shall see more than other folk. Saying of unknown origin Proof of our society's decline is that Halloween has become a broad daylight event for many. Robert Kirby

Halloween best quotes and decorations Proof of our society's decline is that Halloween has become a broad daylight event for many. Robert KirbyWhen black cats prowl and pumpkins gleam, May luck be yours on Halloween. Author Unknown When black cats prowl and pumpkins gleam, May luck be yours on Halloween. Author Unknown It's said that All Hallows' Eve is one of the nights when the veil between the worlds is thin - and whether you believe in such things or not, those roaming spirits probably believe in you, or at least acknowledge your existence, considering that it used to be their own. Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright. Erin Morgenstern Halloween starts earlier and earlier, just like Christmas. Robert Englund I see my face in the mirror and go, 'I'm a Halloween costume? That's what they think of me?' Drew Carey There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world. Jean Baudrillard In Britain, the major public holiday used to be Guy Fawkes Day... that was celebrated on November 5th with things like bonfires and fireworks... I think that made Halloween seem preferable. The idea of having pumpkins and costumes and parties seemed much more appealing than burning down your neighborhood. Lisa Morton In our town, Halloween was terrifying and thrilling, and there was a whiff of homicide. We'd travel by foot in the dark for miles, collecting candy, watching out for adults who seemed too eager to give us treats. Rosecrans Baldwin On Halloween, don't you know back when you were little, your mom tells you don't eat any candy until she checks it? I used to be so tempted to eat my candy on the way to other people's houses. That used to be such a tease. Derrick Rose I'm not a real Halloween kind of guy, because Halloween is every day. Al Jourgensen

Halloween quote by the great poet Poe For about 30 years, Halloween was taken over by pranksters. By the '30s, pranks were causing cities millions of dollars of damage. They considered banning Halloween in many cities, but instead, parents got together and came up with party ideas for kids, and a lot of them involved dressing up and costuming. Lisa Morton There haven't been organized protests, but I have heard of protests where people have wanted to celebrate Halloween. Lisa Morton You look at Cheney, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and Bush - if you saw them on Halloween, they wouldn't need a costume. You'd give them a treat and compliment them on what great-looking demons they were. They are demons. There's no doubt about it. Tommy Chong I live in New Orleans part of the year, and it's a really fun eating town. I bought two homes there, one to live in and one as an investment. They love to eat, drink and dress up in costumes. There are so many reasons to dress up - Mardi Gras, Halloween, Southern Decadence. Jennifer Coolidge I hear from many a man around Halloween that's dressed up as Mama for Halloween. It's a great costume. Vicki Lawrence I'm a really big fan of all things macabre in general; Halloween happens to be my favorite holiday. Dove Cameron I love Halloween, trick or treating and decorating the house. And I love Thanksgiving, because of the football and the fall weather. And of course, I love Christmas - that's my favorite of all! Joe Nichols I learned to glitter the pumpkins for Halloween not because I went into it thinking, 'I'm going to glitter some pumpkins!' No. I bought all of these big, cold, slimy, disgusting pumpkins and tried to carve them, and it was gross, so I had to find something else to do with them. Glitter was life-changing. Jen Lancaster I hate Halloween. I hate dressing up. I hate - I wear wigs, makeup, costumes every day. Halloween is like, my least favorite holiday. Amy Poehler My favorite scary movie was always 'Halloween.' I love that there's hidden emotion underneath Michael Myers' psychotic behavior. Plus, he has the best mask, hands-down. Chris Zylka I've never seen 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre', I've never seen 'Halloween', I've never seen any of the 'Friday the 13ths.' Lin Shaye Download the pdf file about Halloween History If you like Halloween you can also read the following articles: Halloween great and famous quotes Halloween or All Hallows’ Eve Halloween quotes and aphorisms Halloween death poems http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ceNe5q9xfI   Read the full article

[davidpwilson2564]

Bloglet

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Go to the nice Russian lady who attends to my hair. The salon where she works is playing awful music. After which it was my intention to vote but I learn on further exploration that my district doesn't have anyone running. So my walk to the (supposed) poll is for naught.

I stop off to do some grocery shopping. I resolved long ago to never return home empty handed.

The heat is less intense today.

Local color: Retracing my steps I see a long line of girls in their teens near the Koch Theater. An open call? They are all chattering and to me it suggests the sound of birds.

Home. Sick of the news and talk of the debate. (Trump asks his rowdy campaign crowd "Should I be nice to him?" No! they shout.

Note: A while back I found an article by Michael Dirda, the Washington Post book reviewer. I am grateful to him for having recommended "Stoner"...a lesson in novel writing that I've read a couple of times. This little article was about the life of a book reviewer. You might say a day in the life of a book reviewer. He says he reads (sometimes three hours a day), writes, gets out and about and that no day is complete without (get this) "reviewing past misjudgements." Oh boy. I am at the point in my life when such reviewing is relentless, causing me to sometime wince in pain. All those wrong decisions, especially when it comes to how I dealt with the profession. This explains, one guesses, those persistent dreams of gigs gone wrong.

to be continued

[kammartinez]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/07/27/rules-for-reading-dirda/

Paperback or hardcover? Used or new? Let’s talk about our book habits.

Michael Dirda

Over time, all readers acquire an array of personal, often bizarrely eccentric rules and routines that govern — or warp — how they interact with the printed word. For example, some people will buy only crisp, new trade paperbacks and wouldn’t touch a used book on a bet. Fear of cooties, perhaps. Do you remove the dust jacket when you sit down with a novel? I always do. Can you read (or write) while listening to music? I find this impossible, which is why you’ll never see me working at a coffee shop. What follows is a list, in no particular order, of some of my other reading habits and “crotchets,” to use an old-fashioned term. Perhaps you will recognize a few of your own.

Hard- vs. softcover

I almost always prefer a hardcover to a paperback and a first edition to a later printing — except in the case of scholarly works, when I want the latest revised or updated version of the text.

Typeface troubles

My heart sinks when I see a desirable book printed in eye-strainingly small type. Publishers must imagine that only eagles will read it.

Books as gifts

I will spend any amount on gift books for my three grandchildren, now ages 8, 6 and 4. Those same grandchildren exploit me mercilessly when we visit Powell’s Books in their hometown, Portland, Ore.

Follow the flag

As a collector, I follow the flag: that is, American editions for American authors, British editions for British authors.

Remainders

I’m deeply irritated by remainder marks — those little red dots, black lines or other insignia with which publishers deface the bottom of a remaindered book’s text block.

Deciding what to read

These days, I expend preposterous amounts of time dillydallying over what to read next. Like Tennessee Williams’s Blanche Dubois, I want magic. It might be found in the enchantments of a novel’s style, the elegance of a scholar’s mind or simply the excitement of learning something new. So I try a few pages of this book and that, restlessly hoping to start one that finally keeps me spellbound.

What I look for in used book shops

In secondhand bookshops, I always look for sharp copies of 1940s and ’50s paperback mysteries, especially Gold Medal titles featuring sexy women on the cover — the best illustrations are by Robert McGinness — or Dell “mapbacks,” which show the scene of the crime on the back.

Plastic covers: No

I find the heavy-duty dust-jacket protectors, commonly used by public libraries, utterly repellent and always remove them whenever I acquire (not often) an ex-library book.

One is never enough

I can’t stop myself from picking up extra copies of favorite books. I own multiple editions of Cyril Connolly’s “The Unquiet Grave,” Joseph Mitchell’s various collections of New Yorker journalism, and E. Nesbit’s novels about the Treasure Seekers and the Bastable family.

Books aren’t commodities

I despise — viscerally, perhaps irrationally — the people one sometimes sees at used book stores scanning every title with a handheld device to check its online price. They regard books strictly as products and usually don’t know anything about them, only caring about what they can buy low and sell high on Amazon or eBay.

Price stickers

Libraries and secondhand dealers sometimes affix ugly labels or price stickers to everything they sell. I soak these excrescences with lighter fluid, so that — with luck — they can be peeled off without abrasion.

The joy of variety

Over the years, I’ve tried to gather the best or most entertaining works in various fields that interest me. That means the literature of almost all genres and time periods, but also books about art, classical music and the history of ideas. As a working-class kid I daydreamed about owning Henry Higgins’s library, as seen in the film version of “My Fair Lady.” While I’ll never have that wonderful room, I now have the books.

Finding a needle in a haystack

I feel insanely chuffed at recognizing scarce and desirable works that have been overlooked or underpriced. I once paid $5 for an inscribed first edition of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Tell My Horse” in a very good dust jacket. Try to find a like copy today.

How many books to pack?

I never climb on a plane or take a trip without at least two books, the second as backup.

Getting kids to love books

Anything that teaches a young child to love reading is fine, including — to speak from experience — superhero comics and Mad Magazine. To my mind, though, high school English classes should avoid works by living authors and instead emphasize canonical “classics.” Young people will gravitate to their contemporaries as a matter of course, but they won’t read Shakespeare or George Eliot or Walt Whitman or Frederick Douglass on their own.

Covers are art

I keep an eye out for pulp magazines with iconic covers. Thus, I own the August 1927 “War of the Worlds” issue of Amazing Stories illustrated by Frank R. Paul, the June 1933 Weird Tales featuring Margaret Brundage’s daring art for Robert E. Howard’s “Black Colossus,” and some wonderful examples of the Shadow, All-Story, Blue Book and Dime Detective magazines. I’m still looking for an attractive, yet affordable, early issue of Black Mask.

Read grammar books

Every year or so, I dip into guides on how to write, and not just William Strunk and E.B. White’s “The Elements of Style.” I regularly fear — perhaps with good reason — that my prose isn’t just sturdy and plain, like Shaker furniture, but actually stale, flat and dull.

Make a mark

Except for beautifully printed or rarely found books, I read almost everything with a pencil in my hand. I mark favorite passages, scribble notes in margins, sometimes even make shopping lists on the end papers. To paraphrase Gibbon on the Roman Emperor Gordian’s 22 acknowledged concubines, my books are for use, not ostentation.

Check the title pages

Rule of thumb: Always check title pages of used books for author signatures or interesting inscriptions. I’ve found first editions autographed by H.G. Wells and Eric Ambler on the $3 carts of secondhand dealers.

Writers as recommenders

Whenever an author I admire mentions a favorite book in an interview or essay, I make a note to look for a copy.

Kondo-ing books

One of my favorite daydreams — I know how pathetic this sounds — is imagining a month in which I do nothing but cull my books, then properly arrange or even catalogue those that remain.

Keep a notebook handy

I regularly copy favorite sentences and passages from my reading into a small notebook I’ve kept since I was in my early 20s. Examples? “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” — Immanuel Kant. “The primary function of education is to make one maladjusted to ordinary society.” — Northrop Frye. “Love is holy because it is like grace — the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.” — Marilynne Robinson.

Greet old friends

When I’m in a bookstore and notice works by dead authors whom I once counted as friends, I silently say, “Hello, Tom,” “Looking good, John,” “Wish you were here, Alice.”

Buy only what you will read

Mine is a personal library, not a focused collection. I never buy any book I don’t hope to enjoy someday. True collectors, by contrast, aim to be exhaustive and inclusive, gathering all sorts of material they have no intention of ever reading.

One person’s discard …

During my afternoon walks, I always check out Little Free Library boxes and blue recycling bins. I like to see what people have been reading and drinking.

No screens

I’ve never used a Kindle or any type of e-reader. I value books as physical artifacts, each one distinct. Screens impose homogeneity.

Value a home library

I regret that the ideal of a home or family library has pretty much vanished along with door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen and sets of the “Great Books of the Western World.”

Leave old books as they are

Any bowdlerization, “sensitivity editing” or rewriting of older literature is absolutely wrongheaded. Books aren’t something one approves or disapproves of; they are to be understood, interpreted, learned from, shocked by, argued with and enjoyed. Moreover, the evolution of literature and the other arts, their constant renewal over the centuries, has always been fueled by what is now censoriously labeled “cultural appropriation” but which is more properly described as “influence,” “inspiration” or “homage.” Poets, painters, novelists and other artists all borrow, distort and transform. That’s their job; that’s what they do.

Well, I’m a critic

After years as a literary journalist, I no longer feel I’ve really read a book unless I write something about it.

[kamreadsandrecs]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/07/27/rules-for-reading-dirda/

Paperback or hardcover? Used or new? Let’s talk about our book habits.

Michael Dirda

Over time, all readers acquire an array of personal, often bizarrely eccentric rules and routines that govern — or warp — how they interact with the printed word. For example, some people will buy only crisp, new trade paperbacks and wouldn’t touch a used book on a bet. Fear of cooties, perhaps. Do you remove the dust jacket when you sit down with a novel? I always do. Can you read (or write) while listening to music? I find this impossible, which is why you’ll never see me working at a coffee shop. What follows is a list, in no particular order, of some of my other reading habits and “crotchets,” to use an old-fashioned term. Perhaps you will recognize a few of your own.

Hard- vs. softcover

I almost always prefer a hardcover to a paperback and a first edition to a later printing — except in the case of scholarly works, when I want the latest revised or updated version of the text.

Typeface troubles

My heart sinks when I see a desirable book printed in eye-strainingly small type. Publishers must imagine that only eagles will read it.

Books as gifts

I will spend any amount on gift books for my three grandchildren, now ages 8, 6 and 4. Those same grandchildren exploit me mercilessly when we visit Powell’s Books in their hometown, Portland, Ore.

Follow the flag

As a collector, I follow the flag: that is, American editions for American authors, British editions for British authors.

Remainders

I’m deeply irritated by remainder marks — those little red dots, black lines or other insignia with which publishers deface the bottom of a remaindered book’s text block.

Deciding what to read

These days, I expend preposterous amounts of time dillydallying over what to read next. Like Tennessee Williams’s Blanche Dubois, I want magic. It might be found in the enchantments of a novel’s style, the elegance of a scholar’s mind or simply the excitement of learning something new. So I try a few pages of this book and that, restlessly hoping to start one that finally keeps me spellbound.

What I look for in used book shops

In secondhand bookshops, I always look for sharp copies of 1940s and ’50s paperback mysteries, especially Gold Medal titles featuring sexy women on the cover — the best illustrations are by Robert McGinness — or Dell “mapbacks,” which show the scene of the crime on the back.

Plastic covers: No

I find the heavy-duty dust-jacket protectors, commonly used by public libraries, utterly repellent and always remove them whenever I acquire (not often) an ex-library book.

One is never enough

I can’t stop myself from picking up extra copies of favorite books. I own multiple editions of Cyril Connolly’s “The Unquiet Grave,” Joseph Mitchell’s various collections of New Yorker journalism, and E. Nesbit’s novels about the Treasure Seekers and the Bastable family.

Books aren’t commodities

I despise — viscerally, perhaps irrationally — the people one sometimes sees at used book stores scanning every title with a handheld device to check its online price. They regard books strictly as products and usually don’t know anything about them, only caring about what they can buy low and sell high on Amazon or eBay.

Price stickers

Libraries and secondhand dealers sometimes affix ugly labels or price stickers to everything they sell. I soak these excrescences with lighter fluid, so that — with luck — they can be peeled off without abrasion.

The joy of variety

Over the years, I’ve tried to gather the best or most entertaining works in various fields that interest me. That means the literature of almost all genres and time periods, but also books about art, classical music and the history of ideas. As a working-class kid I daydreamed about owning Henry Higgins’s library, as seen in the film version of “My Fair Lady.” While I’ll never have that wonderful room, I now have the books.

Finding a needle in a haystack

I feel insanely chuffed at recognizing scarce and desirable works that have been overlooked or underpriced. I once paid $5 for an inscribed first edition of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Tell My Horse” in a very good dust jacket. Try to find a like copy today.

How many books to pack?

I never climb on a plane or take a trip without at least two books, the second as backup.

Getting kids to love books

Anything that teaches a young child to love reading is fine, including — to speak from experience — superhero comics and Mad Magazine. To my mind, though, high school English classes should avoid works by living authors and instead emphasize canonical “classics.” Young people will gravitate to their contemporaries as a matter of course, but they won’t read Shakespeare or George Eliot or Walt Whitman or Frederick Douglass on their own.

Covers are art

I keep an eye out for pulp magazines with iconic covers. Thus, I own the August 1927 “War of the Worlds” issue of Amazing Stories illustrated by Frank R. Paul, the June 1933 Weird Tales featuring Margaret Brundage’s daring art for Robert E. Howard’s “Black Colossus,” and some wonderful examples of the Shadow, All-Story, Blue Book and Dime Detective magazines. I’m still looking for an attractive, yet affordable, early issue of Black Mask.

Read grammar books

Every year or so, I dip into guides on how to write, and not just William Strunk and E.B. White’s “The Elements of Style.” I regularly fear — perhaps with good reason — that my prose isn’t just sturdy and plain, like Shaker furniture, but actually stale, flat and dull.

Make a mark

Except for beautifully printed or rarely found books, I read almost everything with a pencil in my hand. I mark favorite passages, scribble notes in margins, sometimes even make shopping lists on the end papers. To paraphrase Gibbon on the Roman Emperor Gordian’s 22 acknowledged concubines, my books are for use, not ostentation.

Check the title pages

Rule of thumb: Always check title pages of used books for author signatures or interesting inscriptions. I’ve found first editions autographed by H.G. Wells and Eric Ambler on the $3 carts of secondhand dealers.

Writers as recommenders

Whenever an author I admire mentions a favorite book in an interview or essay, I make a note to look for a copy.

Kondo-ing books

One of my favorite daydreams — I know how pathetic this sounds — is imagining a month in which I do nothing but cull my books, then properly arrange or even catalogue those that remain.

Keep a notebook handy

I regularly copy favorite sentences and passages from my reading into a small notebook I’ve kept since I was in my early 20s. Examples? “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” — Immanuel Kant. “The primary function of education is to make one maladjusted to ordinary society.” — Northrop Frye. “Love is holy because it is like grace — the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.” — Marilynne Robinson.

Greet old friends

When I’m in a bookstore and notice works by dead authors whom I once counted as friends, I silently say, “Hello, Tom,” “Looking good, John,” “Wish you were here, Alice.”

Buy only what you will read

Mine is a personal library, not a focused collection. I never buy any book I don’t hope to enjoy someday. True collectors, by contrast, aim to be exhaustive and inclusive, gathering all sorts of material they have no intention of ever reading.

One person’s discard …

During my afternoon walks, I always check out Little Free Library boxes and blue recycling bins. I like to see what people have been reading and drinking.

No screens

I’ve never used a Kindle or any type of e-reader. I value books as physical artifacts, each one distinct. Screens impose homogeneity.

Value a home library

I regret that the ideal of a home or family library has pretty much vanished along with door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen and sets of the “Great Books of the Western World.”

Leave old books as they are

Any bowdlerization, “sensitivity editing” or rewriting of older literature is absolutely wrongheaded. Books aren’t something one approves or disapproves of; they are to be understood, interpreted, learned from, shocked by, argued with and enjoyed. Moreover, the evolution of literature and the other arts, their constant renewal over the centuries, has always been fueled by what is now censoriously labeled “cultural appropriation” but which is more properly described as “influence,” “inspiration” or “homage.” Poets, painters, novelists and other artists all borrow, distort and transform. That’s their job; that’s what they do.

Well, I’m a critic

After years as a literary journalist, I no longer feel I’ve really read a book unless I write something about it.



[dk-thrive]

some clear, joyful wonder that pierced and uplifted the wounded world around it

Once Flanagan visited a friend’s house when the other boy’s tired, drunken father picked up a trumpet: ‘A life spent listening to music since has been for me no more than an endlessly recurring attempt to recapture those moments in which a drunk miner enchanted me with his trumpet playing, some clear, joyful wonder that pierced and uplifted the wounded world around it.'

— Michael Dirda, on his book review titled "Richard Flanagan’s brilliant ‘Question 7’ defies categorization." (The Washington Post, September 11, 2024)

[exhaled-spirals]

The patient accretion of knowledge, the focusing of all one's energies on some problem in history or science, the dogged pursuit of excellence of whatever kind—these are right and proper ideals for life.

Michael Dirda, Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life

[eliamatrell]

In Theory of Prose Shklovsky begins with the function of art: Quite simply, art aims—in a phrase made famous by Joseph Conrad—to make us see. Through routine and repetition the world has grown gray and dull: people who live near the seashore no longer hear the waves. Automatization, writes Shklovsky “eats away at things, at clothes, at furniture, at our wives, and at our fear of war.” “And so, in order to return sensation to our limbs, in order to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony, man has been given the tool of art.”

Art's chief technique for lifting the scales from our eyes is what is called, in Russian, ostranenie. This has been variously translated as “defamiliarization” or “estrangement” (...) Art makes the familiar strange so that it can be freshly perceived. To do this it presents its material in unexpected, even outlandish ways: the shock of the new. Literary theory studies these distortions, the divergences that create “literariness.”

— MICHAEL DIRDA, from Bound to Please.

[aeronalfrey]

"The Kindle edition of THE AGE OF DECAYED FUTURITY: THE BEST OF MARK SAMUELS is available today! Paperback edition soon to follow, once we finalize the wrap cover.

https://www.amazon.com/Age-Decayed-Futurity-Best-Samuels-ebook/dp/B08FBQT286/

Introduction by Michael Dirda, artwork by Aeron Alfrey, design by Kevin Slaughter." - Hippocampus Press www.hippocampuspress.com

[tiger-moran]

from On Conan Doyle by Michael Dirda

OK then

[ijustkindalikebooks]

In truth, my Anglophilia is fundamentally bookish: I yearn for one of those country house libraries, lined on three walls with mahogany bookshelves, their serried splendor interrupted only by enough space to display, above the fireplace, a pair of crossed swords or sculling oars and perhaps a portrait of some great English worthy.

Michael Dirda.