Book by Book by Michael Dirda

At any age, but especially in childhood, books can transform lives . . . And what children behold, they become.


Yet again I've stumbled upon a book from the library that I literally have to buy as soon as I have the funds to do so. Barring Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable (which I am still currently in the process of reading), this is the book I have written out the most notes for in my book journal. It spans quite a few pages.

I'm a big fan of books that tout the importance of reading. I clearly love to read and I want to be a published author in the near future. Therefore, it follows that I very much enjoy examining this fascination I have for books and the way they really can change lives. Stop What You're Doing And Read This! was just that sort of book and I knew Book by Book would be quite similar.

It was even better.

Michael Dirda is a masterful critic and wordsmith in his own right. He begins by explaining his own passion for books and learning, how it was fostered at an early age and has continued to grow every day of his life. He explains that this book is, in essence, a collection of advice and life lessons gleaned from the pages of books and their authors, mostly concerning reading but also expanding to general advice for life in and of itself.

Everything about Book by Book was wonderful. Dirda has a poetic touch to his words and has become the type of teacher he touts as the best -- they type whose passion for what they teach inspires that passion in others. I may already have such a passion, yet even still, my passion seemed to feed off of his, giving me even more excitement for the topic at hand.

I would suggest this book for anyone who loves to read or is just curious as to why reading is so important. I assuredly benefited from the information I found in this small volume and I hope you will do the same. I'm sure it won't be long before I'm poring through this book a second time.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 


But it is impossible to read serious novels, poetry, essays, and biographies without also growing convinced that they gradually enlarge our minds, refine our spirits, make us more sensitive and understanding. In this way, the humanities encourage the development of our own humanity.

Patterning Works

I'm currently in the midst of reading Book by Book by Michael Dirda, basically a book written about the importance of reading and how books and learning change our lives. Look forward to the review of it soon. In the meantime, I wanted to share a particularly interesting passage at the beginning of Dirda's book. It is essentially a list of books one ought to read in order to have a good grasp of world literature and a firm foundation in one's reading.

I have already read some of these, but there are plenty here that I haven't arrived at just yet. Rest assured, they are now being taken into consideration when it comes to books I need to read in the near future.

Anyway, here's the passage. You may do with it what you will:

What should a person know of the world's literature? It has always seemed obvious to me that the great patterning works ought to lie at the heart of any structured reading program. By "patterning works" I mean those that later authors regularly build on, allude to, work against. There aren't that many of these key books, and they aren't all obvious classics. Here's a roughly chronological short list of those that the diligent might read through in a year or two. For such famous works you can hardly go wrong with any good modern editions, though for the Bible the Authorized, or King James, Version is the one that has most influenced the diction and imagery of English Prose.

The Bible (Old and New Testament)

Bulfinch's Mythology (or any other accounts of the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths)

 Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey

Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Dante, Inferno

The Arabian Nights

Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur (tales of King Arthur and his knights)

Shakespeare's major plays, especially Hamlet, Henry IV, Part One, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest

Cervantes, Don Quixote

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen

Any substantial collection of the world's major folktales

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes