Dirda, Michael. Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life. New York: Holt, 2005.

A birthday present from my sister. At the end of his preface, Dirda (who's the editor of the Washington Post Book Review), includes this little nota bene: "Some of the authors cited use the generic 'man' or the pronoun 'he' to refer to the totality of humankind. The female half of the population will, I trust, make allowances for this largely outmoded convention" (xvii). When I read it, I thought what an odd thing to include. Shouldn't the book-loving reader (or even just the book-reading reader) Dirda presupposes be used to this convention and, decades after the equal rights movement, be somewhat okay with it?

Turns out, though, that the book leans more heavily on the "life" part of its subtitle, and so it's littered with the kind of grand prouncements on Man that are all very prescriptive, and declared by the bevy of guys that make Bartlett's the thick book that it is. I wish this weren't so. I'm far more interested in a book reviewer writing about why he loves books, and which books he loves and why, and why reading is so pleasurable to him than I am in a book reviewer writing about visual arts, classical music, parenting, or matters of the spirit. Sure, Dirda does both, in almost equal amounts, and he does spout good advice—all of it supported by quotations on Mankind—but the overall effect is, I imagine, similar to what one gets when one reads one of those Tuesdays with Morrie books: schmaltz. It's schmaltz mixed with the thin wisdom of Great Books of Western Thought courses.

Grab the book in the store and flip through it for the half-dozen suggested reading lists in various genres. These are pretty good. Also, if yer the kind of person who loves to read pages and pages of quotations on such general subjects as love, education, and art, you've got a lot to work with. I'm not this kind of person, and so I skipped these pages, and so I really haven't finished this book, but that doesn't mean I'm not finished with it.

Writers who provide "praise for Michael Dirda" on the jacket's back:

1. Annie Proulx
   
2. Anne Fadiman
   
3. Harold Bloom
   
4. Francine Prose