Bound to Please is a wonderful book. Subtitled An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education, it’s just what it says on the box.

It’s a compilation of book reviews and a few essays by Michael Dirda, who is the book critic for the Washington Post . He is extraordinarily well-read, and is able to bring his vast experience as a reader to write illuminating reviews of an eclectic collection of books. Each article pulls you in, even when he’s looking at books and authors who you may not have read or will never read.

Dirda’s reviews are so well written that this volume is hard to put down. Just as you feel you’ve had enough, your eye drifts to the next article and before you know it you’re reading a review of the collected letters of Flaubert, or of a biography of John Ruskin, or of Edgar Rice Burroughs, or of the collected fiction of Jorge Luis Borges or… As I say, a very wide-ranging, eclectic selection of literature.

It’s delightful to me that Dirda is so enthusiastic about so many authors who I have already experienced and enjoyed: A. S. Byatt, Phillip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett, Anthony Trollope, Edith Nesbit and many more. He’s a big fan of quality science fiction as well as the classics. Amazingly, he even knows his comic books. In fact, at times you feel that this man has read every book in the world.

And he makes you want to read everything too. It’s almost enough to make you despair, as you read the next review and think My gosh, I’d like to read that. If one only had but world enough and time…

This is a book which will make you fall in love with reading all over again. It’s a treasury of delights. ( )

Michael Dirda’s magisterial collection of critical essays, Bound to Please, carries the subtitle An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education. I confess that subtitle aroused my skepticism; however, I can report quite happily that this is not an example of that unfortunate tendency in American culture of hyperbole to surpass substance. Mr. Dirda’s book is, in fact, an extraordinary one-volume literary education.

It’s safe to say that Michael Dirda is a critic’s critic. His prose is energetic and rigorous, yet unforced. He is a gloriously catholic reader who conveys news from literary worlds that many if not most of his readers have not explored, and probably in many cases didn’t know existed. I particularly appreciated his writing on science fiction, which is edifying and has aroused my own interest in the genre. Furthermore, Mr. Dirda is au courant on translations and editions (his remarks on editions, out-of-print books, and used bookstores divulge, I think, the fact that he is, unsurprisingly, a bibliophile in the sense that he loves books as objects as well as the prose they contain) and this information will no doubt aid those in search of the books and authors he reviews.

Other than Edmund Wilson and the critics I read for my college thesis—e.g. Rene Wellek, Joseph Frank, and Mikhail Bakthin—I confess to a paucity of knowledge about the field. I have found a great deal of contemporary academic criticism opaque and self-indulgent—redolent of what George Jean Nathan once said about criticism: that it is “…the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the author’s fame.” Michal Dirda commits no such offense here, but rather elucidates for the common reader the great books and authors of all time and for all time.

This was not the book to pick up if I was enjoying any trace of the illusion that I was catching up on the books I want to read. I don’t know why I forget, over and over, the futility of that hope: Each book I read brings to mind at least two or three other.
But Michael Dirda exploded the last trace of self-deception. This collection of Sunday essays for the Washington Post Book World introduces me to hundreds of books that escaped my detection or reminded me that “I’ve been meaning to read that.” I had read almost none of the books he features, although a few had made it onto my shelves.
If all Dirda did was to point me to books, that wouldn’t have been so bad. But his brief essays — 1500–1800 words — not only explain why a given book (or books) are worth reading; they also infect me with his enthusiasm.
Some of the books he champions are difficult, post-modern novels. But lest you suspect him of elitist bias, he’s a declared fan of science fiction, fantasy, murder mysteries, and even Georgette Heyer.
Yet there are limits. Dirda decries “sub-literate thrillers, ignoble memoirs, and the evanescent speculations — on history, economics, or world affairs — of media whiz kids” (p. 387).
I have one quibble: This book, in addition to having a great title, comes with two subtitles. The first of these, “An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education” is bombastic and off-putting as Dirda’s own writing is not. The second subtitle, “Essays on Great Writers and Their Books,” performs the role of a good subtitle. I imagine it was on the manuscript as it went to the publisher, but then someone — perhaps in the marketing department — thought it needed tarting up. In my fantasy, a stand-off ensued. Dirda wouldn’t drop his, and the marketers insisted on theirs. So, voila, two subtitles.
If you’re wondering what you might want to read next, you might pick this up and sample an essay or two. Just don’t say you haven’t been warned. ( )

Dirda, a book reviewer for the Washington Post, writes a great review, just the right length and very enticing. There were reviews of many books I was unfamiliar with, as well as some old favorites. ( )

I hesitate before reading a Michael Dirda collection, because I know I'll end up adding another 20 books to my reading list by the time I've finished. Indeed, every review seems to be of something I'd like to read. And dirda is not a snob; his science fiction recommendation list looks pretty good to me, and he's a fan of Dunsany and Lovecraft. But now, thanks to him, I'm very keen to read Beckett novels, Djuna Barnes, Avram Davidson, Sebald, Dawn Powell, and a biography of Algernon Blackwood. For starters. ( )