The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1888; Easton Press edition, with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, 328 pp.) Unlike many people—and for reasons I can’t now fathom—I never read Robert Louis Stevenson as a boy. Not until my mid-30s did I read Treasure Island, and then 10 years more …Continue Reading »
The Wine Lover’s Daughter: A Memoir by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017, 256 pp.) I first discovered Clifton “Kip” Fadiman 30 years ago through a battered copy of his 1960 book, The Lifetime Reading Plan, found while prowling the stacks at Oxford Too, that beloved now-defunct used bookstore in Atlanta’s Peachtree Battle Shopping …Continue Reading »
Second Reading: Notable and Neglected Books Revisited by Jonathan Yardley (Europa Editions, 2011, 351 pp.) Jonathan Yardley served for almost a third of a century as one of the great book reviewers at the Washington Post. The other of course was and still is Michael Dirda. They are two of the foremost literary critics of …Continue Reading »
Vincent Starrett, Born in a Bookshop: Chapters from the Chicago Renascence (University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, 325 pp.) “When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.” So said Vincent Starrett, the author of this memoir. I agree. I love books about books—that is, authors who write about their love of books, their collections of …Continue Reading »
Van Wyck Brooks, The World of Washington Irving (E.P. Dutton, 1944, 387 pp.) Van Wyck Brooks is an author whose work was enormously popular in the mid-20th century. How popular? Walk into any used bookstore and you’ll trip over his books. Time magazine, whose cover he graced in 1944, called him “the nation’s most distinguished …Continue Reading »