Books like Browsings by Michael Dirda

A political, historical fiction set in early Soviet Russia, tracing a former aristocrat confined to a grand hotel in Moscow.

Alan Jacobs shows that reading is thriving in America and offers practical, playful advice to help readers enjoy books without judgment, covering literary fiction, poetry, nonfiction and digital reading.

"In this major collection of his essays, Alberto Manguel, whom George Steiner has called “the Casanova of reading,” argues that the activity of reading, in its broadest sense, defines our species. “We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everything,” writes Manguel, “landscape, the skies, the faces of others, the images and words that our species create.” Reading our own lives and those of others, reading the societies we live in and those that lie beyond our borders, reading the worlds that lie between the covers of a book are the essence of A Reader on Reading. "The thirty-nine essays in this volume explore the crafts of reading and writing, the identity granted to us by literature, the far-reaching shadow of Jorge Luis Borges, to whom Manguel read as a young man, and the links between politics and books and between books and our bodies. The powers of censorship and intellectual curiosity, the art of translation, and those “numinous memory palaces we call libraries” also figure in this remarkable collection. For Manguel and his readers, words, in spite of everything, lend coherence to the world and offer us “a few safe places, as real as paper and as bracing as ink,” to grant us room and board in our passage." - from [Yale University Press][1] [1]: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300159820

Pulitzer Prize‑winning critic Michael Dirda curates nearly ninety world‑class classics in a series of engaging essays, offering readers a guided tour of timeless literature.

A thrilling space adventure set in the Humanx Commonwealth, exploring the consequences of contact with the mysterious Argus V inhabitants.

Michael Dirda’s collection of personal essays from the Washington Post Book World explores the delights of reading across classics, fantasy, crime fiction, children’s literature, and forgotten works.

Chronicles the Los Angeles Public Library fire and its aftermath and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the actor long suspected of setting the fire, showcases the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives, and delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity.