Friday, August 24, 2007 Yap: ‘Book by Book’ By Januar E. Yap Meanwhile
OUR grade-school basketball coach could tell the future. He’d close an eye, summon the spirits, stretch an arm over our heads, and with his stentorian voice declare the team’s first five. At the end of this prophesying rite, I’d be detailed close to the water jug.
Thus, my unceremonious walkout from all hopes of getting a slot with the Harlems. I turned to books instead. No torn ligaments or vertical requisite, reading was better than bench warming.
A good friend of mine once asked for a list of books to read. He wanted to have a map of sorts to guide him in the bookstore thicket. It’s easy, I said, if you see a book with a laurel leaf on its cover that may be worth your attention.
“Book by Book,” by Pulitzer prize-winning literary critic Michael Dirda, is just that guide. “Highly cultured but not pretentious,” says one of its blurbs. Dirda puts his reading notes in order—a quick survey of precious literary gobbets, recommended readings, some advices to life (some of which “fall into the category of common sense”), and a smattering of humor.
“For Book by Book,” says Dirda, “I’ve set down some of what I’ve learned about life from my reading. In its character the result is a florilegium: a “bouquet” of insightful or provocative quotations from favorite authors, surrounded by some of my own observations, several lists, the occasional anecdote, and a series of mini-essays on aspects of life, love, work, education, art, the self, death. There’s even, occasionally, a bit of out-and-out advice.”
If you’re the sort who’s given to histrionics when provoked, Dirda has some advice in his mini-essay, “Taking Things Lightly.” Dirda takes it from Jane Austen: Why else do we live, but “to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in return.” To possess a certain sangfroid in the face of mortal illness, says Dirda, may be akin to what one writer says is the “consolation of philosophy” or the “consolation of personal style.”
In “Book by Book,” Dirda also offers an advice for parents on how to encourage their kids to read more. Here are some:
Read aloud to your children. Dirda quotes Joan Aiken, “If you’re not prepared to read to your children an hour a day, you shouldn’t have any.”
Read yourself. “Grown-ups often pay lip service to the joys of reading, but do the kids see you watching TV or do they see you with a book in your hands?
Here is the litmus test: How often have you said to your child, ‘Just a minute, I want to finish this chapter’?”
Surprisingly, Dirda makes a list of what he calls “desert island discs,” timeless and inexhaustible masterpieces. Not books, but music. In the list are “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” (Platters), “Cry Me a River” (Julie London), “Maybe It Was Memphis” (Pam Tillis), “I Was the One” (Jimmie Dale Gilmore); “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (Eva Cassidy); “The Way You Look Tonight” (Margaret Whiting).
One hundred seventy pages “to find your way back into love,” the love for reading and life in general is what “Book by Book” is all about.
