. . generation. it is now one of the obvious canonical classics like shakespeare, the premise of this book is a lot of the popular fiction of the nineteenth century, are as important to us as the more obvious great books.

this collection of essays has pieces on people like john webster who are obviously important, but also the creator of the regency romance, philip k. dick, the great science fiction writer, arthur conan doyle, the master of english ghost stories, i tried to talk about books that have shaped our imagination that people keep going back to throughout their lives and generation after generation. >> let's go back to john affection. what is genre fiction? >> if that is a marketing device. >> the nineteenth century was the great age of storytelling, that same people would write all kinds of books, arthur conan doyle wrote historical novels, sherlock holmes mysteries, go stories, he wrote every sort of book and story that he thought he could sell. it was only later that we

started assigning genres. one of the things i have worked hard at as a critic is to encourage people to ignore the genre barriers. great books that really speak to them in areas that they tend to dismiss. i don't read a regency romance. but george o'hare's books are as witty as jane austen, similar to it. it is a shame to dismiss such books without really having tried them. the point of this book, classics for pleasure, is to encourage people to try different kinds of classics because there's a lot of pleasure to be had from this. >> editor at the washington post, washington post book world, nearly 30 years, you have four prior books about reading. when did you -- what was your reading habits as a kid?

>> my mother taught me to read before i started kindergarten. i came from a very working-class steel town. my parents were not readers. my father was a steelworker. as i grew older, i read more and more, he would occasionally get annoyed by this and would order me down to the basement to build something, or outside to play. he wasn't sure he likes his own son becoming such a book worm. they had mixed feelings about it but the more he was critical of my reading, when you are young teenager, the more you want to do it. if parents don't like it must be cool, so i did it more and more often. at one point i found a copy of a book called the lifetime reading plan, partial inspiration for classic for pleasure which is beyond the lifetime of reading, i use that as a guide during my teenage years, books to read, and how much i got out of it was

another question. my eyes went across the magic mountain when i was 15-year-old. what i got out of that i don't know. i liked to read, it was an escape, dreams of another life, i wanted to move around the world, feel comfortable with all kinds of people to travel, books were a way of introducing that to me. rubbing off the rough edges, relatively -- then i went off to college and have a lot of culture shock. that is another story. >> when you were compiling this compilation, were there books from your childhood that you included? >> obviously the sherlock holmes, arthur conan doyle, those were important to me. the father brown mysteries were among the first mysteries, i started off with sherlock holmes, fodder brown, agatha christie, and in seventh grade,

somebody told me crime and punishment was a murder story, that sounded good. that launched me into reading really serious grown-up books. it was really good. it really is a terrific mystery and a great novel. >> in 2009 the book industry is going through some great changes. your entire career has been in books. what do you see in the future of 4 books? >> mixed feelings about it. i grew up in the print culture. been coming from working-class background, many generations before then, books, educated through books, was a way up and out. now computers have replaced that in a lot of ways as a key to

success in multiple careers. i love books, i love the feel of them, i love the different sizes. one of my objections to the kindle is it homogenizes everything, they all look alike. this is an electronic reader that you can download text and use the screen as a way of reading a book but it doesn't give you a sense of how far you are in a book. when you read a book you have ten pages left, you don't have that on the screen. because i really value our literature, i know it is going to survive because people need them. the way we access them will defer, but to thousand years ago, people probably said, when the kodak book came out, they said what was wrong with scrawls, they were great. why do we have new technology? we got along without that and we can get along without printed books but i think they will be

around for a while because we like them. we are drawn to them. i know everybody who has a blog, everyone committed to the internet, they all want to have a book. having a blog is enough to having up published book. >> in your entire career, your book review, being at the post book world which folded into the rest of the washington post, only the new york times stands alone. >> that is true. >> where will people discuss books in the future? is it in the blog or on the net? >> that is a good question and a problematic one. as newspaper book sections gave a kind of common meeting place for people interested in the life of the culture and books in general. everybody read the same book sections, whereas with the

internet everyone goes to different logs, there was a lot less of a common ground, so that is worrisome. i imagine that gradually over time even though newspapers or magazines will establish such a strong on-line presence that people go to them to read in the way they read the print versions, the paper versions. or some of the web sites and books sites will emerge as key ones that more and more people go to. they will gradually replace the book sections. it is a loss, there is a great pleasure of reading the sunday paper on the way to work on the subway, having all of this culture together in a convenient, disposable form. books and newspapers are cool

things. it would be a shame for them not to be around. >> people reading the same book review, everyone reading the same book, you have mary shelley's frankenstein, most americans can identify frankenstein and dracula. aside from harry potter, do we have that common dialog any more? >> we do for some degree, books will become popular and there was a period when i was the only person in america who never read the dingy code. there are certain books that become best sellers answer writers will become popular and there will be a conversation described among a certain body, david foster wallace, a great outpouring when he committed suicide because he had so many devoted readers and people were fascinated by his work and shorter pieces, looking forward to his next novel.

there was someone who brought a lot of people together. when kurt vonnegut died, i did an on-line chat, i was astonished at how immediate he felt to younger people. i thought he was someone of my generation but he seems to have touched a lot of lives. there are writers like that. john updike brought forth a lot of reflection, a lot of people. there will be writers who are meaningful to us. one of my goals as a reviewer is, whenever possible, not to review any book that is on the best-seller list because i try to encourage people to read beyond the best-seller list because those are often books that speak to them more powerfully. the really good book by the more specialized reader who doesn't become a best seller phenomenon that i worry about, those are

books that people made part of their lives when they were members of the book-of-the-month club and went to the library to check out books. the domination of trade names, as you might say, on the best-seller list, is a kind of restraint of trade for readers. not that stephen king or james patterson or any number of other people don't write good books of their source, but i don't want people just reading their books, i want them to read all kinds of books. that is why books like "classics for pleasure" encourage people to read a around, don't just follow the herd to the books in front of the store. look at the shelves, go to the library, talk to your friends, what do they like, and explore the books of the past as well as the present. >> i am going to put you to test and mention, you are a

bookseller, i walked into your bookstore, recommend three books to me, what are you selling the? >> an open book by michael dirda, "classics for pleasure". i probably want to know little about you but i know you like science fiction, i might recommend my favorite living science fiction writer and fantasy writer, jack vance, wonderfully ornate pros, most famous book is dying earth, a great influence on michael shaven, different ships in oakland. he might be someone i recommend or ursula k. le gwynn. a lot of people say i don't like science fiction or fantasy, read the left-hand of darkness. a book that examines every sort of aspect of our lives, sexual relations, the meaning of gender, the hero is black. there are all sorts of

interesting elements. the key is things that were previously written. it is always hard to do that, to recommend books. this is why i had to write 5 of them, filled with lists and titles, things that i think people might want to check out. not to be self promoting but i think these books are useful for just the reason you describe. they will tell people about books they might want to try. >> what do we learn from reading literature? a lot of the book here are literary in nature. >> they are literary, even genre books are high end, we learn -- we enrich our lives, the aesthetic pleasure of a work of art that is the lovely put together, just as we get listening pleasure from listening to music or looking at a painting.

our lives are narrow in some ways. we can only go down certain paths. the real tragedy of life, we would like to be many things. i would like to be a mississippi riverboat gambler, i would like to the james bond, i would like to be an opera singer, i would like to be a cistercian monk. i can't be all those things. but through reading i can get a sense of what it is like to be those things, i can experience of the of those lives, i can enrich my own and see what they are like. i can live more lives than one. if it is fiction, they tell good stories. anyone who has read the hound of the baskervilles, saying to sherlock holmes, there was a footprint, by a gigantic hound. he is a reader -- >> something you