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Shakespeare, Austen, and the Bible reappear as suggestions for a guest library that Dirda says should stock "familiar, cozy, browsable, above all soothing" works. Particularly pleasing is Dirda's inclusion of suggested children's classics to put in a guest library, including The Blue Fairy Book.

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 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

Books & Culture Corner and Books & Culture's Book of the Week, from Christianity Today sister publication Books & Culture: A Christian Review (want a free trial issue?), appears regularly on Tuesdays at Christianity Today. Earlier editions include:

The Not-So-Evil Empire | A report on The Historical Society's conference earlier this month. (June 13, 2006)

Very Important Fiction | The Gospel according to The New York Times Book Review. (May 23, 2006)

Back to the Garden | Digging in the dirt as spiritual formation. (May 16, 2006)

Words Made Flesh | Calvin College's 2006 Festival of Faith & Writing. (April 25, 2006)

Betrayed Again | The Gospel of Judas Roadshow. (April 18, 2006)

American Theocrat | Richard John Neuhaus, Catholic political ambitions, and the evangelical pawns. (April 11, 2006)

Was George Washington a Christian? | A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. (April 4, 2006)

The Mystery of the Numbers | B&C's annual baseball preview, 2006 edition. (March 21, 2006)

Passionately Ambivalent | Christians in the art world. (Feb. 14, 2006)

Worship—What We've Learned | A report from the Calvin Symposium. (Jan. 31, 2006)

Making—and Breaking—Vows | A compelling memoir from the son of a priest and a former nun. (Jan. 17, 2006)

Coming to a Bookstore Near You | Marsden and Hart, Noll and Stout, and more (Jan. 10, 2006)

Ring Out the Old Year | Some highly subjective awards for 2005. (Jan. 4, 2006)

For book lovers, our 2006 CT book awards are available online, along with our book awards for 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, and 1997, as well as our Books of the Twentieth Century. For other coverage or reviews, see our Books archive and the weekly Books & Culture Corner.

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June (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50