Books like Classics for pleasure by Michael Dirda

A guide to unlocking the hidden meanings in literature, showing readers how to decode symbols and symbols and find deeper meanings in texts.

Francine Prose shows how studying great writers—from Dostoyevsky to Joyce—reveals the craft of storytelling, urging readers to analyze language and technique in order to improve their own writing.

Terry Eagleton guides readers through the art of literary analysis, exploring how tone, rhythm, texture, syntax, allusion, and ambiguity shape meaning across works from Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling.

A collection of essays by Nick Hornby, focusing on his book collection and the books he reads in his busy life as a writer in America.

Harold Bloom surveys the Western literary canon, championing the autonomy of the aesthetic and centering Shakespeare as the pivotal figure whose influence spans from Milton to modern writers.

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.

Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" (The Paris Review) and "the best book critic in America" (The New York Observer). In addition to the Pulitzer Prize he was awarded for his reviews in The Washington Post, he picked up an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for his most recent book, On Conan Doyle. Dirda's latest volume collects fifty of his witty and wide-ranging reflections on literary journalism, book collecting, and the writers he loves. Reaching from the classics to the post-moderns, his allusions dance from Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and M. F. K. Fisher to Marilynne Robinson, Hunter S. Thompson, and David Foster Wallace. Dirda's topics are equally diverse: literary pets, the lost art of cursive writing, book inscriptions, the pleasures of science fiction conventions, author photographs, novelists in old age, Oberlin College, a year in Marseille, writer's block, and much more, not to overlook a few rants about Washington life and American culture. As admirers of his earlier books will expect, there are annotated lists galore—of perfect book titles, great adventure novels, favorite words, essential books about books, and beloved children's classics, as well as a revealing peek at the titles Michael keeps on his own nightstand.

This "little history" takes on a very big subject: the glorious span of literature from Greek myth to graphic novels, from 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' to 'Harry Potter.' John Sutherland is perfectly suited to the task. He has researched, taught, and written on virtually every area of literature, and his infectious passion for books and reading has defined his own life. Now he guides young readers and the grown-ups in their lives on an entertaining journey "through the wardrobe" to a greater awareness of how literature from across the world can transport us and help us to make sense of what it means to be human. Sutherland introduces great classics in his own irresistible way, enlivening his offerings with humor as well as learning: 'Beowulf,' Shakespeare, 'Don Quixote,' the Romantics, Dickens, 'Moby Dick,' 'The Waste Land,' Woolf, "1984," and dozens of others. He adds to these a less-expected, personal selection of authors and works, including literature usually considered well below 'serious attention.'

Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here--spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism--are thirty-six immediately relevant, elegantly written, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.Following the title essay, which explores fourteen definitions of "the classic," Calvino offers writings that are at once critical appraisals and personal appreciations of, among others: Homer, Xenophon, Ovid, Pliny, Nezami, Ariosto, Cardano, Galileo, Defoe, Voltaire, Diderot, Ortes, Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Twain, Henry James, Stevenson, Conrad, Pasternak, Gadda, Montale, Hemingway, Ponge, Borges, and Queneau.At a time when the Western canon and the very notion of "literary greatness" have come under increasing disparagement by the vanguard of so-called multiculturalism, Why Read the Classics? gives us an inspiriting corrective.From the Hardcover edition.

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.

Wendy Lesser’s thoughtful essay collection celebrates the joys and surprises of reading, drawing on her lifelong love of books and experience editing The Threepenny Review.

"The story of literature in sixteen acts, from Alexander the Great and the Iliad to ebooks and Harry Potter, this engaging book brings together remarkable people and surprising events to show how writing shaped cultures, religions, and the history of the world"-- "Great stories of people, history, and literature are combined to show how the power of the written word has influenced civilizations throughout time. Puchner writes about Ezra and the Old Testament, a young woman in 9th century Japan who wrote the first novel, a wild story about Cervantes and pirates, how Benjamin Franklin became the father of print in the United States, and more. Over this remarkable, engaging book, Puchner tells stories of creative people whose lives and beliefs led them to create groundbreaking foundational texts, and how those texts affected the world they were born into. Puchner offers a truly comprehensive and worldwide literary perspective, spanning time and cultures, from the first written story--The Epic of Gilgamesh--to the wordsmiths of Mande in Africa, to Harry Potter. He also focuses on writing technologies, including the invention of paper, the printing press, and the modern book, and how they shaped not just writing, but religion and economy, too. Taking us from clay tablets and ancient scrolls, all the way to internet tablets and scrolling down on computers today, Puchner will change the way you view the past, present, and future of literature. Readers will find new discoveries about old texts they love, and new stories they hadn't known before, as Martin Puchner tells the story of literature in 17 acts: how stories shaped history, and gave us THE WRITTEN WORLD"--