An Open Book: Chapters fom a Reader's Life

An Open Book: Chapters fom a Reader's Life

<p><strong>"A love story, full of a passion for literature and marked by intellectual vigor."―Bernadette Murphy, <em>Los Angeles Times</em></strong></p> "All that kid wants to do is stick his nose in a book," Michael Dirda's steelworker father used to complain, worried about his son's passion for reading. In <em>An Open Book</em>, one of the most delightful memoirs to emerge in years, the acclaimed literary journalist Michael Dirda re-creates his boyhood in rust-belt Ohio, first in the working-class town of Lorain, then at Oberlin College. In addition to his colorful family and friends, <em>An Open Book</em> also features the great writers and fictional characters who fueled Dirda's imagination: from Green Lantern to Sherlock Holmes, from Candy to Proust. The result is an affectionate homage to small-town America―summer jobs, school fights, sweepstakes contests, and first dates―as well as a paean to what could arguably be called the last great age of reading. "Dirda is a superb literary essayist."―Harold Bloom "Michael Dirda's memoir―no surprise to me―is so good that I went up to the attic meaning to send him one of my antique Big Little books as a salute to excellence...A great job. I'll be buying <em>An Open Book</em> for my children and grandchildren."―Russell Baker, author of <em>Growing Up</em> "Here, in <em>An Open Book</em>, is the show and tell of a wonderful American story, everything coming together in the immemorial dance of literature and memory, of history and gossip, and of the deeply felt, bittersweet story (his own) of a young life. Read it and rejoice."―George Garrett "A lovely, unapologetically nostalgic remembrance of growing up in a more innocent America, but it is also the touching story of one person's lifelong love affair with words."―June Sawyer, <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em> "Dirda inhabits each book he reads. Inhabits it―and makes a space alongside it for us to join him....He is a rare treasure."―James Sallis, <em>Boston Sunday Globe</em>