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The book's companions—art and music—aren't forgotten either. Dirda gives us a list of his "desert island discs," and discusses the role of books about art.
It's hard to pull all of this off without sounding pretentious or pedantic. As Dirda points out early in the book, "Quote a verse from the Bible or a line from Shakespeare, mention the date of a battle or a character out of Charles Dickens, and expect to be regarded with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Erudition makes people feel uneasy." Yet he does it all with charm and ease.
Book by Book brims with so much material, it's hard to take it all in at once. This is a book that, read properly, requires marginalia, underlining, dog–earing, and reading and referring to over and over.
Rachel DiCarlo is a Phillips Foundation fellow.
Copyright © 2006 Books & Culture.Click for reprint information.
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