Synopses & Reviews
"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 , 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, 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 for my children and grandchildren."--Russell Baker, author of "Here, in , 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, "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,
Synopsis
"A love story, full of a passion for literature and marked by intellectual vigor."--Bernadette Murphy,
About the Author
, who won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism at the , is the author of , , and . He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.