along with my wife and on behalf of the entire staff, thank you so much for coming. a few administrative notes now would be a good time to turn off your cell phone and anything that might beat. when we get to the part of the session. as we are recording this morning c-span book tv is here. when you come up to get the books i never suffered appreciate if you pulled up a chair that you are sitting in. it's a delight to be introducing michael this evening.

it's a celebration of books and bookstore reading. you really know how to endear yourself to us. of course michael's own fondness for books dates back to his childhood and he is a gracious reader as a kid and perceived his interest all the way through graduate school earning a doctor that and comparative literature. instead of staying in academia he launched into what turned out to be a lifelong career as a literary journalist in the "washington post" book world session of 1978. 15 years later he wanted to surprise for criticism and stayed another ten years before leaving the paper to become a book reviewer, sas, feature writer. he's continued to write a weekly column on books for the post.

anybody that has read his columns does how enthusiastic he is about all kinds of books, not just bestsellers. and what a mac he has for making others want to read those books. he's offered a few previous books of his own including a memoir and a study of sir arthur conan doyle as well as the collections of essays. he grew out of the year composing weekly columns for the american scholar. the columns collected in the book range widely across not only the genre of topics reflecting the area.

it's a someone who's spent a life in literature. as a number of you may know he's at book collector and in fact he considers book collecting the greatest pastime in the world. and some of my favorite passages and browsing far about. one of the best statement i've heard about acquiring the books and stalking a personal library with them, he writes, quote, digital text are well and good but books on shelves are a presence in your life. please welcome in our prisons now michael durbin. [applause]

if you can hear me can't hear me say google wildly. [laughter] as some of you have come into politics and prose in the passing heard me speak. it's not going to be any different tonight. if there's any aspects of books, book reviewing, collecting the

"washington post" all publishing please think of some good questions to ask. as brad said, the book began as part of a program of my own. all of my books have been what you would lose the call books about blogs. i've written personal essays and meetings. there is further passages from the reading and i chose a number

of may favorite quotations that added little essays essays and book in the book lists to it for that particular volume. there's books called classics for pleasure that came about because i was asked to do a supplement to the lifetime reading plan which some of you may remember a book that was important in my own life but i decided instead to write about the next hundred books you should read rather than the great classics of literature. i've read a lot about books and was thinking of another where i could approach the same subject. bob wilson asked me if i would take over the weekly column.

it was a long time journalist in many ways and many forms [inaudible] i enjoyed doing it. these are written as a relaxation from my other work. as brad said it took the buyout from the postwar.

so i've always tried to write a review for the post and then two other pieces each month for somebody else. i decided to add this to the book as a kind of relaxation so. 2012, 2013 is out when we had this time two years ago. when the power went out for five or six days i decided i would write about this and tell people what i thought about it. it is a kind of portrait of the

writer as a freelance journalist, somebody made his living on books. my family comes added with some degree but also day-to-day activities and they deal with book collecting and bookshops. but there are other topics, too. i wrote about [inaudible] i wrote a love letter basically to the college of which i'm a very proud alumnus. so in the cursive handwriting. let me talk about some more.

it's called scribble scribble. that's just about it. in the school years chris, mike and nate patiently talk to the history of cursive handwriting. they are typing the implement stress syndrome to develop a callous on the top record of the middle finger of the right hand. my own handwriting is essentially illegible to anyone other than myself. and after a few days even i can't always make out the meaning of my scribbles. it's far more than breaking the

secret of the rosetta stone. the doctors and the guess of such complete capacity has come to me and humbly be and humbly asked if i might conduct seminars or offer master classes at medical conventions. i go on from there. so, that is the tone that i try to adopt so that it's an easy-going conversational kind of funny. not always. i have some very wishful pieces about going home to ohio and sleeping in my old bedroom in the house i grew up in and what it's like to go there. toni morrison is from laura in the asphalt. we went to the national book festival which we spent the first 20 minutes talking of lorraine. but here's the entire essay

called grades. the - this came about because i was teaching a course at the university of maryland on the novel and this is the classic adventure novel 1985 to 15. we started with king solomon and the tarzan of the apes, there were a couple of others as well. i'm working on a book on popular fiction so that fit into that project. the grades at the end of the semester. the spring semester officially ended this week at the university of maryland. last sunday may 20 under the perfect blue sky, they tossed them into the air and went on to the houses of the one parties to celebrate.

they can hope that envy all of the graduates just starting out in life so full of youth and energy. when i look back.-full-stop, stop let's not go further down that path towards the remarks. my own thoughts and occasions can generally be boiled down to best of luck have fun. i filed them on the modernization last friday setting aside the demand of the final exam in as many turned to the perturbed papers it's being judged performance in the computer alone - accomplishment alone? should they air on the side of kindness or will it return to the standards? in my own life grades have always been of taxation.

when i was very little my report cards tended to be speckled with views for unsatisfactory. or the remarks when the teacher said these improvements. in high school i regularly floated the authority such that it often received shockingly poor remarks. for the period in my senior year i air and let me stress that the verb the dna english. for college, well i struggled for two years to break out of the category of the hard-working b. i did eventually but then it was psychological damage done. [laughter] at any moment sends i've always assumed that nearly everyone around me was smarter than i was. one actually gifted and probably capable of understanding the high degree. even now people frequently

snicker when i admit i can't fathom what they meant by the world is everything that is the case. when i confessed that all of those intuitive aspects of digital technology are not intuitive to me with concerted effort i can follow the instructions that don't ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smartphone. my own $20 out here from radioshack has features that even now remain. [laughter] it is a media net. don't even start to explain. it won't mean anything to me. long ago i realized that my only real talent can be reduced to a single word, dogged us. i'm sometimes willing to put in the amount of time as i find a project that interests me. a study with devotion, consult

experts, about training regimens that would inspire and then suddenly drop whatever it is and move on. for years i ran or exercised every day and wore a size 33 slacks. then i stopped in paris to get into my pajamas at night. the house itself is in shambles in the classic men's clothing, manual typewriters of the leverageable kind and then quite a few books. okay. thousands of books. many of them in boxes in the basement. double-sided bookcase is purchased when they went out of business just sitting in my gosh waiting for the space to put them in. my wife draws the line at the dining room. my wife draws the line at the

dining room even though it could easily be eaten on trays. [laughter] people can be so judgmental. i've even heard words like compulsive obsessive and spoken in my presence. that last sounds especially harsh. okay that was a joke. i do have some pretty impressive stacks of issues at the times literary supplement. you never could tell when you want to settle down with an article about the claims of the century. [laughter] anyway, that is why i dislike grades. people are individuals, so how can we reduce him to an 85 b. or c. or even sometimes d. along with an invitation for a quiet chat with the high school principal. [applause]

if you liked my reviews or read my other books i think you would like this one. it's perhaps a little bit more personal, a little more washington in some ways than my others, but i meant it to be fun and i think you'll find it to be fun. i will go back to talking more but i want to see if there are questions to begin with. and if there are, please come to the microphone and ask away. >> while you are doing that and thinking, i will give you another example. we have a question coming. i guess i will force it into a question. i don't know if you remember maybe 30 years ago - >> okay that was the first job

that i ever had it coming back to work. and if you remember coming up to the desk of the books up the books up to hear it all the way down there and you underwent he made the clerk do? >> and the date into the biography. >> i worked there, you know. you didn't know i worked there? at me tell you. >> i don't need to ask the question. [laughter] >> when i first came to washington i came because my girlfriend and wife was here. she is a conservator at the national gallery. she's the one who would take care of it. she was looking at the library of congress that i came here and i talked part-time while i finished my dissertation and i was offered a a couple of teaching jobs but not in places

that she wanted to move to such as houston. so i stayed here in washington and became a technical writer for the company much of this can be cleaned from the earlier books often in the introductions. but for a number of months i worked on sunday afternoons at the local markets at the corner of covert and connecticut. this was a really crummy paperback book exchange. he would take anything in exchange, telephone books, high school manuals come anything. my job was to work there for three hours in return for credit. because that was $5 an hour something which i would have to take in paperback and what have you. went and find a job, i like to be around books and a certain amount.

plus, one day a couple came in with five or six boxes of glistening hardback first edition's. it turned out they had these books for a while, haven't been able to sell them so they were essentially going to give them to peter. i doubt they ever found a paperback they wanted. but it was very common at first. so i was shelving them and looking at them as one does you noticed there was a book by an author from my hometown and so i bought it and i had a mint first edition now in private to me by toni morrison. so that is quite an expensive book. i did make out alternately at

the book market in covert bookmark and covert connecticut. are there other questions? please do think of questions. >> i will repeat the question just in case. >> maybe you can say more, how is this to be a literary person and a political town. >> what is it like to be a literary person in a political town? this isn't only a political town. the existence of this wonderful bookstore and a variety of books and it shows that washington is one of the great reading towns of the country. plus politicians it's hard to imagine i know, occasionally do read books. so we have all the people that work for the government often despised by the rest of the country but who are friends of mine and i know they are readers

and a serious intellectual people with a wide range of interests so it's not so lonely. i once thought of moving to new york and taking a job there. but a friend of mine once said to me at the time [inaudible] the first man then the second man in rome. other questions? >> i wanted to ask you how are the titles that you reviewed selected? stomach the title is - question is how are the titles selected? for many years when i was an editor as well as a writer and a staffer at the post, i was able

to pick books i was pretty sure i was going to like. if i didn't like them i withdraw my editors had and assign it to somebody else. for the past ten or 12 years as a contract writer, i'm able to suggest books to my editors i would like to review it for the most part they would indulge me treat every so often they would ask me to do a book i hadn't thought of writing about and i would always say yes just to keep the balance going. a review the review of books would send a book and say i hope you will write about this for us. and i always want to write about it for him somehow they are the best paying market. for other magazines and offered books that 80% of them are ones

i choose myself. ..

>> >> more questions? i love questions. >> my question is about ballclubs do you have any suggestions what we should be thinking about for literature to deepen our discussions? >> it is choosing the right

books that generate discussion on their own. the you still have a monthly book club on-line and once or twice a year there would have writers to come to have conversations but aunt that'd the perfect book a science-fiction novel the hero is a black earthling on another planet. that they undergo a sexual changes sometimes they are female sometimes their mail. to fall in love during that

prime directive to have adventures together it is beautifully written and i thought this is a book you talk about in any number of ways proposal to lift all four books like that is what you need in a book club. though revenues start to talk about in the book, the first question is the old teacher of mine used to say in class. to say what species is this? >> but you don't want to judge your novel by the same standards that you judge the henry james novel. they have different goals to

understand what they are then the book will make sense. so with those harlequin romance by zero local writer and might lead sentence was this is where i lose all credibility as a critic because they said they were quite wonderful for what they were ready like craftsman and fulfill all the requirements for this particular john roper ago they were successful but if i judged differently, i always think about what species that is. >> i am curious your opinion as to which journalists covering foreign affairs

true they questioned the past 14 years ago heading off to war? >> i will dodge that question. i read "the wall street journal" and the "washington post" and i value the reporting that was their wish we did not get involved the wonderful people that have written about this and my expertise is in other areas. >> but i do question and this may not be popular but i question the quality of "the washington post" having lived in other countries most recently brigid there is a lot more intellectual curiosity and challenging the status quo as well as the political elite other

than the your times or "the post" which i think much of america was too quick. >> talk about america and asia and south satisfaction. >> we seem to have a thicker sports section and an international affairs. [laughter] >> i do read "the wall street journal" i like to know what my masters are up to. >> you will not find it there. >> another question? >> i have two questions. the first is your technique. >> follow the wind. >> to review the numerous books that you have, how it did you learn to halt "the reader" to desperately into reading the book you have reviewed? you have that quality which

is beautiful because i have read several books the you have recommended. in the realm of latin american literature, who is the finest writer of the 20th century? >> how do i hook people? i spend a lot of time on the lead and the opening sentences in my younger days i would spin it very view to increase six hours imus bin two hours of the first couple of sentences to find the right tone, words, the right way to appeal and to find something different. if a book have very strong voice i would often suppress my own voice to with his

third year, for word and then i went right connecting things for curve --. but if it was nonfiction and with the material was interesting but not the right thing i will try to find a fact that would catch someone's attention. but i found i have written in of refused i could sit down and to type almost anything and it turned into a folk. [laughter] i will probably lose this quality tomorrow and have to struggle the rest of my career. [laughter] but what is the most interesting aspect of this book? that is where i start bin i can try to alternate the quotations and passages.

some will have more petitions than others but in the back of my mind to think through how will i end? mower i will look back to the sentence then suddenly it will appear to me. doesn't always work out that way. i always big - - think of the dickens and vice and in my case make it fast and quick and light i don't like anything to be too slow or convoluted and this is one reason i think of myself not as a critic but a literary journalist i don't want

things to sound sober and academic or tedious to my mind. i was in medieval studies and i have read a lot of three books in my day. [laughter] i realize that serious scholarship and criticism has to deal with that but that is not my goal. my goal to read the book for pleasure if i like it i want to make other people like it and the pleasure i got for reading this book if i have done that i have done my duty to myself at least and to the author. who was the greatest latin america director of the 20th century? two obvious examples come to mind marquez is one that

comes to mind pardon my accent but they are wonderful writers but there are lots of them. i remember those wonderful story the 100 years of solitude story the leading spanish jim portuguese translator as the publisher is ask him to translates and he said i cannot do that for five years he said i will wait. [laughter] >> thank you very much. >> i am from syracuse ballerina shirley jackson's was the most fun experience ever. what do you think of the

idea to read the biography at the same time? is that a good approach? >> i don't think the biography will help you too much. even with ulysses but once you get into the of linguistic gains i thank you need to read each sentence slow the to see how many levels of puns choice is working on. there is a good book of adaptations that is helpful but like most just plunge into with a and read it you will not likely read it straight through like a thriller but it is fun to dip into iran to get those wonderful passages.

>> if you are going to do talk about the long bond beloved bookstores can you say anything about moonstone books? spirit that was the purveyor of fantasy and science fiction near georgetown. it was a wonderful place but lot of bookstores are wonderful places there are no bad when some may have some better areas than the others. if your interested in fantasy or science fiction that is where you wanted to go. seven q. clearly enjoy reading a lot. >> i could take it or the

fish. [laughter] if you don't injure '08 in book is it important to power through or change your perspective? because i just tend to read a lot for school if i have the choice i will not. >> unless you are paid if you don't like it don't read it. but you have to recognize certain books have different value just because he is doing weird things with language i don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't a good book they were not in the right place to read it now. but people should constantly to work outside their comfort zone pick up books by people you have never heard of. try new poets they need all the help they can get into

will discover wonderful things if you sit back to keep reading this same stepz

>> >> and dash as you grow older someone said to like mystery stories crime and punishment kind of is. [laughter] i could not put it down and i read in three days. [laughter] you just go from there. where does it come from? i don't know.

my father never read a book in his life. my mother never read a book in her life after high school. the opening pages of the open book i talk about my mother sitting on the dining room floor next to the heat register turning the pages of the golden books to say look at the acute little bunny and the poky little puppy they gave her such pleasure but i thought maybe there is something to this so i would look at them carefully to figure out how to read i was not a good reader in school. because they also didn't take attention to teachers there was a terrible student

for much of my early school life. but the best thing to do is your children or grandchildren. if you don't that doesn't mean they will become fanatical. i have sons and they all read but how do they become such as their father? side representative impresses i would spend saturdays going to thrift stores to real bookstore severed readings of the library but it was a challenge to in part of the avenger growing up whereas my children there were surrounded by books since they were born. they are not magical the way they are to me.

i hope that part the answers your question still neck the second half. >>. [laughter] >> as a society do we develop more readers? >> some of that answer i just gave that children need to re-read to. plus they need to see their parents reading. if you say go read but if they look around tuesday -- spending six hours a day watching television or playing video games they are not dumb. my parents don't do that. >> bank deere. >> for the pure pleasure

which two or three or four books have you gone back to read the most often? >> which ones? [laughter] i will give you a terrible confession it is very important the first time you just get the plot the second time you see how works how with couples with something in the last chapter but essentially i don't. i do have a couple but i am so childlike i want to read

and do things and things that i have not read yet i keep thinking i am missing out. plus read a lot of new books but they are from the past the book i am working on now that i had kind of forgotten and i want to read them so i am constantly going for new stuff. but i do have strange favorite books. the unquiet grave a second role for it is a book like "browsings" in a way kind i'd like a diary but despair at the end of civilization his wife has left him everything he values is gone.

it is a beautiful type of book that i wrote my a dissertation on stendhal. in particular nonfiction books is the secret in the book but also to have the sensibility coupled with worldliness that appeals to me but growing up as a kid who never wore anything but sweatshirt's i wanted to be sophisticated. and worldly and cosmopolitan. you should recognize i could never be those things.

[laughter] i have a certain type of boyish charm. [laughter] but that is the best i could do. [laughter] and i work with that. it is like riding. you were supposed to have a command of metaphor and simile but nothing reminds me of anything else. [laughter] i cannot do that. i have to carefully choose each now and verb so they carry the weight if i can have anything fancy so i hope the party answers your question. there is only one book but i mentioned i got a d in english and i was the senior in high school maybe only 20 went to college in my class.

i was not sure i would go to college because i it didn't have any money. 15 miles down the road i said i have no money my parents have no money but if you give me a scholarship alone and a job i will work hard and he will be proud of me one day. fortunately i scored phenomenally well on standardized test. they said write an essay said the five books that were most important to me in my life at that point for the odyssey, the of boat -- the rosewall and -- walden walden, alice drug to -- "atlas shrugged" and heart

of darkness. number six would have been dale carnegie. [laughter] i read that the same time as walden. bit carnegie says to think in terms of the other person how to interact with people and society but pharao says don't worry. become who you are. of the of repressed englishmen he writes a sentence early that says i have fallen so low if i had to choose between falling in love with a woman and reading a book about love i would have chosen of book. [laughter]

i finished the novel the next week i went out to on my first date. [laughter] >> other than an autobiography about what percentage of your reading is non-fiction? >> i would say three-quarters. if you look at my reviews. why? my editor refuse a novel every week. i couldn't do that in a million years. serious novels as opposed to mysteries or comic novels they leave and be drained their filled with heartbreaking tragedy in the motion when you close it it was wonderful but i want to go through that again for a while. i have to wait a couple of weeks before start of another of a novel.

so i have spoken between. >> i was in a student in english but my first and say i got an f. >> i worked harder i got the d +. [laughter] >> i thought i did. the greatest insult the copy came back coffee stains that it was memorable if i was a victorian. [laughter] the you were talking earlier how you pick books could you go into that a little more? writers have a hard time to get reviewed or noticed so what pains to go to europe to find the unknown?

the wreckage you go to considerable pains actually. if you read my staff over the course of the year of christmastime of obscure small press of older books or strange titles that i have heard were interesting i feel it is important to keep reminding people there is a lot out there beside the best seller list books that give you a lot of choice but if you go to wal-mart you will see the same ted authors week after week. there are books that will speak to movingly and my job is to try to find those or talk about them from time to time when i can i do have to review the trade books but i

like university press titles i have a great fondness for fantasy and science fiction and mystery is my closest friends are involved in science fiction and fantasy one of the essays in this book is about a science-fiction conventions in massachusetts. >> howard hughes gore to read four or five books a week? >> much less. i have heard that people can read a book a day. i moved my lips when i read. it takes me forever her really. but the fact that i have no other life practically means i could never get three even at an ordinary novel but it

is our like to spend my time i would average one book a week anyway but i read more than that. i go back to things i am thinking all the time i read '' -- beat -- bits and pieces. my life is involved with the mental universe so i just don't crank through the books it is not how many we get through but what they give to us. . .