Classics for Pleasure | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Dirda
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 38797
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0156033852
Dewey Decimal Number: 028
EAN: 9780156033855
ASIN: 0156033852
Publication Date: November 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This is not your father’s list of classics. In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world’s most entertaining books. Writing with affection as well as authority, Dirda covers masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as epics, history, essay, and children’s literature. Organized thematically, these are works that have shaped our imaginations. "Love’s Mysteries" moves from Sappho and Arthurian romance to Soeren Kierkegaard and Georgette Heyer. In other categories Dirda discusses not only Dracula and Sherlock Holmes but also the Tao Te Ching and Icelandic sagas, Frederick Douglass and Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Whether writing about Petronius or Perelman, Dirda makes literature come alive. Classics for Pleasure is a perfect companion for any reading group or lover of books.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
Warning: reading this will make you acquire more books! January 6, 2009
Full disclosure: This book has made me a fan of Michael Dirda. He's smart, witty (but not obnoxiously so), extravagantly well-read, and writes lucidly and entertainingly, without condescension. Simply put, he's charming. You couldn't ask for a better guide to help you navigate the classics.
The list of classics discussed in this book is not your parent's list. More specifically, it is not Clifton Fadiman's list. In his introduction, Dirda pays homage to Fadiman's "Lifetime Reading Plan", which he stumbled on as a teenager, and which guided his own reading path. He goes on to explain that "Classics for Pleasure" deliberately ignores most of the authors discussed by Fadiman; as these are likely to be familiar to most readers already, "it seemed more useful - and fun - to point readers to new authors and less obvious classics".
In approximately 90 essays, Dirda covers a considerable amount of ground. He groups his authors into eleven categories:
Playful Imaginations
Heroes
Love's Mysteries
Words from the Wise
Everyday Magic
Lives of Consequence
The Dark Side
Traveler's Tales
The Way We Live Now
Realms of Adventure
Encyclopedic Visions
Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Cervantes, Goethe, Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Proust, Mann, and Joyce are all missing from this book. This allows Dirda to cast a broader net, including such authors as Diderot, Jaroslav Hasek, Zola, Ernst Junger, Cavafy, Spinoza, E. Nesbit, Cardano, Frederick Douglass, Sheridan LeFanu, H.P. Lovecraft, J.K. Huysmans, Elizabeth Gaskell, Zora Neale Hurston, H. Rider Haggard, G.K. Chesterton, Frazer, Malraux, Ovid, Petronius, and Philip K. Dick.
The complete list may be found in the Table of Contents:
Classics for Pleasure
I can't really do justice to the legerdemain that Dirda exhibits in almost every essay in the book - the way he gives you just enough background information to pique your interest, picks out just the detail from a book, or the author's life, to get you hooked, gets in a few key insights, then exits elegantly stage right, with exactly the right parting remark that seals the deal. Even if you had no interest at all in an author's work before reading what Dirda has to say, by the time he's done, you are likely at least to want to give it a try.
The man is a silver-tongued charmer, I tell you. And I mean that in the best possible way. This is a terrific book to help expand your reading horizons.
This had me plowing into obscure classics! October 14, 2008
When a writer is so convincing that he is able to persuade a reader [me] to look up obscure and daunting classics like the Icelandic Sagas, I think he deserves praise indeed. Michael Dirda has written a wonderful book 'Classics for Pleasure", which encourages readers to check out diverse works of literature which he has grouped under eleven broad themes.
The themes are "Playful Imaginations", "Heroes of their Time", "Love's Mysteries", "Words from the Wise", "Everyday Magic", "Lives of Consequence", "The Dark Side", "Traveler's Tales", "The Way We Live Now", " Realms of Adventure", and "Encyclopedic Visions". Every chapter begins with an explanation of what it is about followed by reviews of works Dirda recommends we read.
Unlike some of Dirda's other works which seemed quite inaccessible for the average reader, this work makes for a pleasurable read. The style in which it is written makes the classics reviewed seem very appealing, and I eagerly made lists of works I plan on reading, including the formidable Icelandic Sagas [which I am currently plowing through]. What I also liked about Dirda's style is that he never assumes the reader knows even the most basic information about a particular work, and provides summaries for each work reviewed.
It was interesting to note that although some familiar classics are given coverage here [Dracula, Frankenstein, Rebecca, Agatha Christie's works], he also mentions Georgette Heyer's works which I had always considered to be in the category of frothy romance novels! There is always an element of surprise in reading some of his more eccentric recommendations and I found that very refreshing.Some of the works I was unfamiliar with and put on my reading list based on Dirda's recoomendations are Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings [Abolqasem Ferdowsi], The Box of Delights [John Masefield], "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" [James Hogg], The Road to Oxyiana [Robert Byron], and many others.
All in all, "Classics for Pleasure" makes a delightful read for those who love books, readers aiming to broaden their reading horizons, and ambitious readers who wish to cover more obscure/lesser-known/formidable classics. Highly recommended!
An exuberant exploration of neglected classics February 27, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
So infectious is Dirda's delight in the passion for living that goes into a good book that I found myself eager to read all his recommendations - including those authors I have already read and disliked for one (obviously inadequate) reason or another.
Stunningly well read, Dirda appreciates a well-turned phrase, an individual style, a keen wit, or a powerful intellect. He illuminates his choices with quotes, artfully tantalizing plot summaries and biographical snippets. Story is key. "Nearly all the works covered tell great stories, whether these are fictional, historical or biographical."
What isn't here is The Canon. No Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens or Jane Austen. They can be found elsewhere, particularly in John S. Major's revised edition of Dirda's childhood inspiration, Clifton Fadiman's "The Lifetime Reading Plan." Dirda avoids the obvious masters to focus on "several key authors passed over by Fadiman and Major, many important writers of what one might call the popular imagination, and a few seemingly minor figures who deserve to be better known."
So, from Sappho to Agatha Christie, Thomas More to Jules Verne, "Beowulf" to "The Maltese Falcon," Dirda extols the insights and idiosyncrasies of a broad range of talents and niches. His essays are personal, witty and brief - he covers almost 90 books in little more than 300 pages and readers will almost always long for more.
He divides his book into 11 thematic sections, i.e., Words from the Wise; Traveler's Tales; Realms of Adventure, and chooses seven to 10 authors for each. Most are at least familiar, but a few are obscure (at least to me). The 16th century astrologer and thorough autobiographer, for instance, Girolamo Cardano, appears wildly entertaining and the Scotsman William Roughead spent much of his life attending murder trials and writing about the "bold artists" whose common characteristic was self-conceit.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for "The Washington Post," Dirda clearly had a lot of fun writing this concise, exuberant, and exquisitely organized book. Readers will be tempted to read, or re-read, every one of his selections.
Can't read everything? Be wise! February 27, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book offers an organized method to select the best of what you hope to read someday.
A Classical Picaresque December 27, 2007
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
Meandering (at a delicious, leisurely pace) through Michael Dirda's CLASSICS FOR PLEASURE, one feels as though he is riding shotgun through a world of both well-known and unknown wonders with an expert guide. And though Michael Kinsley, in his blurb, writes, "Michael Dirda is the best-read person in America. But he doesn't rub it in," he forgets to add this: Dirda seems to fervently hope you will not only appreciate his literary expertise, but will also rise to meet it. His voice is that generous and unpretentious.
Dirda divides his mostly 2-4 page descriptions of classics you should read into these novel categories: Playful Imaginations, Heroes of Their Time, Love's Mysteries, Words from the Wise, Everyday Magic, Lives of Consequence, The Dark Side, Traveler's Tales, The Way We Live Now, Realms of Adventure, and Encyclopedic Visions. Those titles alone are like browsing colorful glossies at the travel agency. You can't wait to jump in.
In Realms of Adventure, Dirda shows his range of tastes, including writers as varied as Rudyard Kipling and Dashiell Hammett. In reviewing H. Rider Haggard's KING SOLOMON'S MINES, Dirda shares a typically fascinating piece of trivia: "He [Haggard] had reportedly boasted that he could write a better novel than Robert Louis Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND. His brother challenged him to prove it, and KING SOLOMON'S MINES was the result." At the end of the essay on Haggard, Dirda plays coy: "Is it better than TREASURE ISLAND? As a boy I thought so, but happily there's no need to choose between them." Nevertheless, Dirda's job is done. The less well-known H. Rider Haggard's two books, KING SOLOMON'S MINES and SHE are added to the reader's (THIS reader's, anyway) already listing "To-Be-Read" pile.
Which brings me to this: Bibliophile's beware. Dirda's beguilingly delightful insights into the works of some 88 authors will literally charm you onto turf where angels formerly feared to tread ("angels" being your former reading self). In the section Encyclopedic Visions, he even makes Edward Gibbon's HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE sound tempting. Not that I'm going to go there anytime soon. First there are too many formerly unknown or forgotten shorter classics I want to visit: Jean Toomer's CANE, Edward Gorey's AMPHIGOREY, Lucian's THE TRUE HISTORY, and E.T.A. Hoffman's short stories, for starters.
Bottom line? This is a great resource to own for those of us who love to live by the oft-repeated words, "So many books, so little time." It's a problem we not only can, but love to, live with...
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