Classics For Pleasure (Harvest Book) - Softcover

Dirda, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156033852 ISBN 13: 9780156033855

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2008

Synopsis

This is not your father’s list of classics. In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world’s most entertaining books.  Writing with affection as well as authority, Dirda covers masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as epics, history, essay, and children’s literature. Organized thematically, these are works that have shaped our imaginations. "Love’s Mysteries" moves from Sappho and Arthurian romance to Sören Kierkegaard and Georgette Heyer. In other categories Dirda discusses not only Dracula and Sherlock Holmes but also the Tao Te Ching and Icelandic sagas, Frederick Douglass and Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Whether writing about Petronius or Perelman, Dirda makes literature come alive. Classics for Pleasure is a perfect companion for any reading group or lover of books.

About this title

Book Description:

Published in hardcover by Harcourt, 2007, 978-0-15-101251-0/0-15-101251-2

From the Inside Flap:

Classics for pleasure? To some readers this may seem an oxymoron. Aren't classics supposed to be difficult, esoteric, and probably a little boring? . . . I sympathize with this common view, even if  it is largely wrong.  Classics are classics not because they are educational, but because people have found them worth reading, generation after generation, century after century.  More than anything else, great books speak to us of our own all-too-real feelings, confusions and daydreams
This is not, your father's—or your mother's--list of classics. In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world's most entertaining books. Writing with affection as well as authority, Dirda covers masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as of biography and history, poetry and children's literature. Organized thematically, these are the works that have shaped our imaginations and inspired our dreams and adventures. Here are Sappho's yearnings and the Arthurian romances, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the ghost stories of M. R. James, the classic fairy tales and the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer.

Dirda approaches each of his chosen titles as a passionate reader rather than as a critic or scholar. He points us to new authors, less familiar classics, and genre titles often excluded from the canon. Whether writing about Petronius or S. J. Perelman, H. P. Lovecraft or the Icelandic sagas, Michael Dirda makes literature come alive. Full of surprises and wit, Classics for Pleasure is a perfect companion for any reading group or lover of books.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0156033852
• ISBN 13: 9780156033855
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352