Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments

5 best books like Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments (Michael Dirda): 84, Charing Cross Road, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love, One for the Books, Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World

84, Charing Cross Road

Author	Helene Hanff
ISBN	0140143505

This charming classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share...

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Author	Anne Fadiman
ISBN	0374527229

Anne Fadiman is—by her own admission—the sort of person who learned about sex from her father's copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate's 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material...

Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love

Author	Anne Fadiman
ISBN	0374530548

Is a book the same book—or a reader the same reader—the second time around? The seventeen authors in this witty and poignant collection of essays all agree on the answer: Never.

The editor of Rereadings is Anne Fadiman, and readers of her bestselling book Ex Libris will find this volume...

One for the Books

Author	Joe Queenan
ISBN	0670025828

One of America’s leading humorists and author of the bestseller Closing Time examines his own obsession with books

Joe Queenan became a voracious reader as a means of escape from a joyless childhood in a Philadelphia housing project. In the years since then he has dedicated himself to an...

Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World

Author	Nicholas A. Basbanes
ISBN	0060593245

Inspired by a landmark exhibition mounted by the British Museum in 1963 to celebrate five eventful centuries of the printed word, Nicholas A. Basbanes offers a lively consideration of writings that have "made things happen" in the world, works that have both nudged the course of history and fired the...