For years, I meant to read 'Arabian Sands', Wilfred Thesiger's account of two punishing camel journeys during the late 1940s across Southern Arabia's Empty Quarter. Now that I have, I can sheepishly join the chorus of those who revere the book as one of the half dozen greatest works of modern English travel writing.
— Michael Dirda
In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs, having failed at everything else, decided to write a novel. He was then in his mid-thirties, married with two children, barely supporting his family as the agent for a pencil-sharpener business.
Reading books might itself be a bit weird, but obviously okay, since books were part of school, and doing well in school was clearly a good thing. But comics were more like candy, just flashy wrappers without any nourishment. Cheap thrills.
Any man's death diminishes us, but when an artist passes away, we lose not just an island but an entire archipelago.
The savagery and power of Edith Wharton's ghost stories surprised me.
Late summer is perfect for classic mysteries - think of Raymond Chandler's hot Santa Anas and Agatha Christie's Mediterranean resorts - while big ambitious works of nonfiction are best approached in September and early October, when we still feel energetic and the grass no longer needs to be cut.
I once read that there are more biographical works about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other man in history.
Halloween isn't the only time for ghosts and ghost stories. In Victorian Britain, spooky winter's tales were part of the Christmas season, often told after dinner, over port or coffee.
Not all of E. Nesbit's children's books are fantasies, but even the most realistic somehow seem magical. In her holiday world, nobody ever goes to school, though all the kids know their English history, Greek myths, and classic tales of derring-do.
My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written.
'The Admirable Crichton' is probably Barrie's most famous work after 'Peter Pan', nearly a pendant to that classic.
I'm nothing if not a literary hedonist.
I once read that in vaudeville, it was often the straight guy who got paid more than the comic because that's the tougher job. He has to set up the jokes in just the right way.
Critics for established venues are vetted by editors; they usually demonstrate a certain objectivity; and they come with known backgrounds and specialized knowledge.
Writers keep writing and publishers publishing - it never grows boring.
Adventurous reading allows one to escape a little from the provincialities of one's home culture and the blinders of one's narrow self.
Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing.
Born in 1910, Wilfrid Thesiger spent his childhood in Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, as it was then called, where his father was an important and much-admired British official.
Most scholarly books we read for the information or insight they contain. But some we return to simply for the pleasure of the author's company.
In my own case, my folks didn't actually object to comics, as many parents did, but they pretty much felt the things were a waste of time.
In classic noir fiction and film, it is always hot. Fans whirr in sweltering hotel rooms, sweat forms on a stranger's brow, the muggy air stifles - one can hardly breathe. Come nightfall, there is no relief, only the darkness that allows illicit lovers to meet, the trusted to betray, and murderers to act.
Many people know that Shakespeare's dramatic 'canon' was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays.
Deep in my cortex, the year is divided into reading seasons. The period from mid-October to Christmas, for instance, is 'ghost story' time, while Jane Austen and P. G. Wodehouse pretty much own April and May.
Many cultures believe that on a certain day - Halloween, the Irish Samhain Eve, Mexico's 'Dia de los Muertos' - the veil between this world and the next is especially thin.
I suppose movie theaters are the churches of the modern age, where we gather reverently to worship the tinsel gods of Hollywood.
I haven't read for pleasure in 35 years. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure from what I read... For me, it's gotten so that it doesn't seem as though I've read a book unless I've written about it. It really seems the completion of the reading process.
I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'.
Back in the 1950s and '60s, J. M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' - starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard - was regularly aired on network television during the Christmas season. I must have seen it four or five times and remember, in particular, Ritchard's gloriously camp interpretation of Captain Hook.
Books can be a source of solace, but I see them mainly as a source of pleasure, personal as well as esthetic.
I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet.
I find that the Amazon comments often are exceptionally shrewd and insightful, so I'm not going to diss them. But you don't really have any guarantees that what you're reading wasn't written out of friendship or spite.
I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over.
I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.
When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers.
Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon, in 1901, grew up in a farming family, and eventually held a number of blue-collar jobs. He knew what it was to be poor and to work hard for a living.
Neither my mom nor my dad ever bought me any comic books. Certainly not for Christmas. I suspect that doing so would have violated the Parents' Code.
Young people looking for adventure fiction now generally turn to fantasy, but for those of a certain age, the spy thriller has long been the escape reading of choice.
For me, the two weeks between Christmas and Twelfth Night have come to be reserved for desultory reading. The pressure of the holiday is over, the weather outside is frightful, there are lots of leftovers to munch on, vacation hours are being used up.
While Napoleon believed his fortunes to be governed by destiny, his real genius lay in self-control and martial daring coupled with an indomitable will to power.
From the late 19th to the early 20th century, the December issue of almost any general-interest magazine regularly featured a holiday horror or two.
It's a sad commentary on our time - to use a phrase much favored by my late father - that people increasingly celebrate Christmas Day by going to the movies.
I've always liked an easygoing, colloquial style. I like the kind of reviewer who is essentially a fellow reader, an enthusiast, a fan.
To my mind, 'Dear Brutus' stands halfway between Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 'Into the Woods'. Like them, it is a play about enchantment and disillusion, dreams and reality.
I'm an appreciator. I love all kinds of books, and I want others to love them, too.
My gift, if that's not too grandiose a term, is one for describing novels, biographies, and works of history in such a way that people want to read them.
People who've read my reviews know my tastes, know how I approach a book, know my background. I can write with believable authority. It doesn't mean I'm always right.
In a single lifetime, roughly from 1865 to 1930, one finds the pioneering and patterning works of modern fantasy, science fiction, children's literature and detective fiction, of modern adventure, mystery and romance.
Every summer, I regret that I didn't become a college teacher. Such a sweet life! With all that vacation time! You'll never get me to believe that being a tenured professor at a good college is anything but Heaven on earth.
I love the look of books published by the firm of Rupert Hart-Davis: They strike me as handsome, elegant, and inviting. I'll pick up almost anything with that imprint, especially if it's in a jacket or priced low.
