by Michael Dirda ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2000
For any book lover who—despite Kirkus’s best efforts—doesn’t know what to read next, Dirda will provide a lovely and genial...
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 (from the nostalgic reminiscences of “The Crime of His Life” to the wry apocalyptic musings of “Millennial Readings”), 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, but pedantry is not his goal; he obviously just loves books with a passion as infectious as the Ebola virus. His response to required reading in high school (“Read at Whim!”) 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 printed word. The ornery reader may find a quibble or two to snipe about (Harry Potter is maligned as merely “scary and exciting” in “Tomes for Tots”), but the joy of Dirda’s opinions lies in letting the voice and wit of a true bibliophile into your head.
For any book lover who—despite Kirkus’s best efforts—doesn’t know what to read next, Dirda will provide a lovely and genial guide.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-253-33824-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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