An Open Book

Coming of Age in the Heartland

By Michael Dirda

2003

First Published

3.88

Average Rating

320

Number of Pages

9H46M

Audio Length

A funny, wistful memoir by a Pulitzer Prize—winning critic that recalls the charm of Growing Up and the tenderness of One Writer's Beginnings. "ALL THAT KID WANTS TO DO is stick his nose in a book, " Michael Dirda's steelworker father used to complain, worried about his son's passion for reading. In An Open Book, one of the most delightful memoirs to emerge in years, the acclaimed literary journalist Michael Dirda re-creates his boyhood in rust-belt Ohio, first in the working-class town of Lorain, then at Oberlin College. In addition to his colorful family and friends, An Open Book also features the great writers and fictional characters who fueled Dirda's imagination: from Green Lantern to Sherlock Holmes, from Candy to Proust. The result is an affectionate homage to small-town America—summer jobs, school fights, sweepstakes contests, and first dates—as well as a paean to what could arguably be called the last great age of reading.

Avg Rating

3.88

Number of Ratings

319

5 STARS

28%

4 STARS

39%

3 STARS

27%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Michael Dirda

Author · 9 books

Michael Dirda (born 1948), a Fulbright Fellowship recipient, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic. After earning a PhD in comparative literature from Cornell University, the joined the Washington Post in 1978. Two collections of Dirda's literary journalism have been published: Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; ISBN 0-253-33824-7) and Bound to Please (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005; ISBN 0-393-05757-7). He has also written Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2005; ISBN 0-8050-7877-0), Classics for Pleasure (Orlando: Harcourt, 2007; ISBN 0-151-01251-2), critical biographical study On Conan Doyle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011; ISBN 0-691-15135-0), which received a 2012 Edgar Award, and the autobiographical An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003; ISBN 0-393-05756-9). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael\_...