For as long as I can remember I've had the problem of having more books that I want to read, than the time to actually read them. Recently a friend gifted me with this book thinking I would enjoy it. Enjoy it I did, but now thanks to my friend and author Michael Dirda my problem has gotten worse than ever. So many great reading suggestions, but nowhere near the time, to get to them all... ( )

Michael Dirda sounds a lot like me in “Browsings” (2015), a collection of essays he wrote several years ago for The American Scholar. No, I have not written for The Washington Post and a number of other prominent publications. No, I am not a member of The Baker Street Irregulars and a number of other notable organizations. No, I am not that smart. But when it comes to being incapable of resisting the allure of a used book store, Dirda and I are, as Stan Laurel might put it, like two peas in a pot.

Dirda covers a lot of ground in these essays, but one topic he returns to again and again is the endless allure of books -- bookstores, spring book sales, thrift shops where old books might be found in a corner somewhere, forgotten books, obscure books, books on books. Again and again, Dirda, also a native Ohioan born in the 1940s, reminds me of me.

The author confesses that he received a D in English the first semester of his senior year in high school, even though by this time he was already hooked on books. Yet he went on to Oberlin and became a scholar in literature and a regular Washington Post columnist on books. And although he can write authoritatively about James Joyce, Jane Austen, John Updike and the like, his true passion, it turns out, runs more to Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Rice Burroughs and classic science fiction. Give him a vintage pulp magazine or some book from the 1930s by an author nobody else remembers, and he is a happy man.

"Many people simply read fiction for pleasure and nonfiction for information," Dirda writes. "I often do myself. But I also think of some books as my friends and I like to have them around. They brighten my life." Yes, that sounds like me. ( )

First, I want to be clear: this 3 star rating is for the audiobook only. I have a print copy of Browsings, but in an effort to pack more reading in, I borrowed the audiobook from my library to listen while driving to and from work.

The narrator, John Lescault, is not great. He breathes very little, if any, personality into the reading of the essays. As the book progresses, some life comes out here and there, but mostly there are large swaths of the narration that sound exactly like a computer generated voice is reading the text to you. Because work ended for the holidays before the book did, I read the last few columns from my print edition. Once I got Lescault's voice out of my head, I found the essays a lot more lively and enjoyable. I suspect when I pick this up again some time in the future, when the soulless narration has faded from memory, I'll enjoy the essays a lot more.

Browsings is a collection of Dirda's columns, written over the course of a year, for The American Scholar. He talks about a little of everything book related and his reading tastes are the very definition of eclectic, so there's likely something here for everyone who might enjoy reading about a bookish life. My only disappointment – aside from the narration –was a lack of solid, factual information about collecting and living with books, but that's the result of my own hopeful expectations, not to any unmet promises on the part of the book itself.

An enjoyable book to dip in and out of, but definitely skip the audio version. ( )

I enjoyed this book very much as it seems that my tastes and the authors align pretty closely.

He taught a course and I plan to read as many of these books that I haven't read as of yet.

“The Modern Adventure Novel”—A semester course, a follow-up to “The Classic Adventure Novel,” taught as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland:
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (1912)
Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood (1922)
Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades (1928)
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest (1929)
H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios (1939)
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (1956)
Chester Himes, The Real Cool Killers (1959)
Charles Portis, True Grit (1968)
William Goldman, The Princess Bride (1973)

“The Classic Adventure Novel: 1885-1915,” covering 10 books. Given those dates, you can probably guess half the titles on the reading list: H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines; Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped; H. G. Wells, The Time Machine; Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel; E. Nesbit, The Story of the Amulet; G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday; Rudyard Kipling, Kim; A. Conan Doyle, The Lost World; Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes; and John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

My only complaint is that the author often rails against ebooks, which is understandable for a book collector. What's truley ironic is that I'm reading the kindle edition of his book. I'm a reader, not a collector and I just want to read, those 10 books he taught about, would be easy to carry around in my ereader, along with the fact that I'll be able to pick up at least a few of those books for free from sites like Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive and a host of other sites. ( )

I’m giving Michael Dirda’s “Browsings” 5/5 stars, which doesn’t really reflect my enjoyment of it as much as it does my respect for the work he’s done here. If you are a book lover, as I am, this book is for you. Be forewarned, however, that regardless of how well read you are, this book will humble you after about two essays. The book is a compilation of Dirda’s columns from one year of the journal “The American Scholar.” Dirda also writes for the Washington Post and several other publications. I made the mistake of listening to the audio version of Dirda’s book. I say “made the mistake” because this book should be accompanied by paper and pen to take notes of titles Dirda mentions throughout the columns. Listening to it on a treadmill as I did doesn’t lend itself to taking notes. Also, I wasn’t all that enamored with the narrator John Lescault. My guess is Lescault was chosen for his impeccable enunciation and his ability to speak several languages, notably French. I found his narration to be pretty pretentious, but others will hear a dose of credibility in Lexcault that the incredible range of titles Dirda covers deserved. So about this, Mr. Lescault, it’s me, not you. I would recommend this book to any reader who wishes to expand his personal library and accumulate a list of titles that will last the rest of his life. ( )