Book by Book: Notes on Reading and LifeMacmillan, 2 de maig 2006 - 170 pàgines 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. |
Continguts
Work and Leisure | 22 |
Bringing It All Back Home | 69 |
Living in the World | 86 |
The Interior Library | 116 |
Matters of the Spirit | 135 |
A Selective and Idiosyncratic Whos | 155 |
Acknowledgments | 169 |
Altres edicions - Mostra-ho tot
Frases i termes més freqüents
adventure American artist Auden beauty better Bible Book by Book Bovary called century Christmas classic contemporary courtly love critic culture Cyril Connolly death early English Eros essayist essays Ezra Pound famous fantasy favorite feel Flaubert French friends G. K. Chesterton George Greek Guy Davenport happy heart Henry historian human ideal imagination James John kids literary literature live look M. F. K. Fisher MARVIN MUDRICK masterpiece matter memoir MICHAEL DIRDA mind modern moral mystery Ned Rorem never Nietzsche night novel novelist once one's passion person philosopher pleasure poem poet poetry prose reader Renaissance Robert Robertson Davies scholar science fiction sexual short-story writer simply sometimes soul sound spirit story strange T. S. Eliot teacher things Thomas Thoreau tion true ture Vladimir Nabokov W. H. Auden William woman women words writing wrote young