the inaugural and harrison to the dissatisfaction of his supporters stood bareheaded, without a coat on the steps and read his long address. he got a cold than and went back, but he seemed to have recovered, at least my sources say he was well enough to go to the farmers market several weeks later. there he was caught in a drenching thunderstorm, he came home and got a bad cold which went into pneumonia. this was one month after his inaugural. from what i have been able to piece together he might have made it except the doctors were called in whose treatment at the time consisted at the time of

bleeding and other practices which even in 1840 the medical society said probably contributed to his death. he died of pneumonia one month after taking office. one thing he was sent to pursue was a corrupt political system of warding jobs to the people who are given to your campaigner helped with your campaign instead of the best people. he issued executive order that they would not be allowed to participate in politics or contribute and he did start in that direction i believe that cincinnati ends and americans have really not recognize the

contribution that william henry harrison maine what is probably different about harrison is what you find in that. of history, a town's person is interested in urban affairs. they do things there. country people are less likely to be noted. harrison had 1 foot in the city and one point in the city he brought the two together. >> for more information on book tvs recent visit to cincinnati go to c-span.org/local content pulitzer prize-winning boat michael presents his essays on the book world. next on book tv.

>> good evening, i am bradley graham, co-owner of politics and prose along with my wife and on behalf of of the entire staff, thank you so much for coming. a few quick administrative notes. now would be a good time to turn off your cell phone or anything that might be. when we get to the q&a part of the session we encourage anyone to ask a question, please try to make your way to the microphone. we are recording this evening on c-span book tv. we would like to make sure your question is picked up on the tape. before you come out to get your

book signed we would appreciate if you would fold up the chair you're sitting in and lean against a bookshelf or column. it is a delight to introduce michael this evening. he has written a book that i have to say is really easy for a bookseller to love. it is such a celebration of books and bookstores and reading. you really know how to endure yourself to us michael. of course michael's own fondness for books dates back to his childhood. he was a reader as a child and pursued this interest all the way through graduate school earning a doctorate in comparative literature. instead of staying in academia, he launched into a turned out lifeline career as a literary journalist. fifteen years later, he won a

pulitzer prize for classism and stayed another ten years before leaving the paper to become a freelance book reviewer, essayist, and feature writer. he has continued to write a weekly column on books for the post. anybody who has read michael's columns knows how enthusiastic he is about all kinds of books, not just bestsellers. he has a knack for making others want to read those books. he has authored previous books of his own including a memoir, and a study as well as several selections of essays. his latest book, browsing grew out of the year he spent composing weekly columns for the american scholar website between 2012 and 2013. the collins collected in the book, range widely across genres

and topics reflecting michael's varied personal interest. they are also written in his familiar, easy-going conversational style. in running through the pieces, the exhilaration of someone who has spent a life and literature. michael as you may know is a book collector, he considers book collecting the greatest pastime in the world. some of my favorite passages are about this insatiable addiction and his frequent and sometimes expensive visit to bookstores. one of the best statements i have heard about acquiring physical books and stocking a personal library with them, michael writes quote digital text are well and good but books on shelves our presence in your

life. please welcome in our presence now michael. [applause]. >> thank you brad for that very generous introduction. can you all hear me? if you can't signal wildly. how is that, better? as some of you know who have come to politics and prose in the past to hear me speak, i'm a pretty easy aggressive, rambling, disorganized kind of speaker. that will not be any different tonight. what i do recommend, however and what what i most enjoy our questions from the audience. i thought i would talk a little bit about the genesis of

browsing, read one of the essays, may be part of another one, maybe say more and then open the floor to your questions on any aspects of books, publishing, the sky's the limit. i enjoy interacting with an audience so please do think of a question to ask. as brad said this book began as part of a program of my own really. all of my books have been what you loosely call books about books. i have written a memoir about growing up in a working-class town and reading shape my life. i have written books of personal essays, and early one called readings which is someone like browsing's. there's a bedside book which is

based on my commonplace book which is a notebook which you inscribe favorite passages from your reading. i just chose a number of my favorite quotations and added essays and booklist to it for that particular volume. there is a book called classics for pleasure that came about because i was asked to do a supplement to another book, a book that was important in my own life. i decided instead to write about the next 100 books you should read rather than the great obvious classics of literature. to supplement that with great works of other literature and fiction. i have done a lot of books about books and i was thinking of another way i could approach the same subject.

when bob wilson the american scholar asked me to take over his weekly column that william windsor was giving up. the sensor is the author of other books, he is a charming writer in many ways and other forms. so i thought it would be fun to do but i would only do it for a year. after a year my i would have anything more to say. i did it for a year, i enjoy doing it. this book is the result. i should emphasize these are all like to. sometimes i have written fairly serious pieces, particularly in a book called, bound to please. these are written as relaxation for my other work. as brad said, i became a contract writer for the paper

and also started writing a good deal for other magazines and periodicals including a supplement and a half a dozen others. i have always tried to write a review each week for the post and two other pieces each month for somebody else. i decided to add this to the mix as kind of a relaxation. the essays are meant to be funny. some are touching, a number of them are rants. it has. it has very little to do with books. in 2012, 2013 year is when we had the power outages all around washington for a week. i have a lot of books in the basement, i keep a dehumidifier running all the time. when when the power went out for five or six days, i could picture my books turning to mold and mildew, i decided i would write

about this. so it really is a kind of portrait of a writer as a freelance journalist. someone who is making his living writing about books. my family comes into it to some degree, but also my day to day activities. a lot of the essays deal with book collecting or visiting these bookshops. there are other topics too. i write about the year i've lived in a french port city. i wrote a love letter to my college, which i am a very proud alumnus. there are pieces about all sorts of odd subjects. paper, cursive handwriting.

let me read one and i will come back and talk some more. will i will reach just the beginning of the one about handling. it is called scribble, scribble. my three sons, all in their early to mid 20s consigned their names when they concentrate, but that is just about it. during their elementary school years, chris, mike, and nate were patiently taught the mysteries of cursive handwriting. since then, handwriting. since then, they have tapped their thumbs on smart form keyboards more often than they have clicked the pen or pencil. they're typing may be well they will never develop a callous on the top knuckle of their middle finger. my own handwriting is essentially illegible other than to myself. after a few days,

even i can't i can't make out the meaning of my scribbles. deciphering my list of important things to do would challenge others far more than breaking the secret of the rosetta stone. eminent doctors, envious, envious of a scrawl of such complete and all drove that come to me and humbly ask, if i might conduct seminars or offer master classes at medical conventions. i go on from there. that is the tone that i try to adopt. it is easy-going, conversational, kind of funny. not always, i have some very pieces about going home from ohio and sleeping in my old bedroom in the house i grew up in. what is like to go there.

we went to the conversation of the national book festival which spent the first 20 minutes of talking about lorraine. here i will read an entire essay called grades. >> this came about because i was teaching a course at the university of maryland on an adventure marilyn. we started with king solomon's mines then we kidnapped the time machine, and tarzan of the apes, of that on thursday a couple of others as well. i am working on a book about popular fiction in the late 19th century. but grades, how about grades at

the end of the semester. >> the spring semester officially entered at the end of this week at the university of maryland. last sunday may 20, under perfectly blue side seniors toss their boards into the air and went onto open houses and parties to celebrate. i confess that i can't help it but envy all of those smiling graduates just starting out in life, full of youth. when i look back, stop. let's not go further down that path to a corny commencement style remarks, shall we. my own thoughts of such occasions can generally be boiled down to, best of of luck kids, have fun. i filed the grades for my class last friday. setting aside marking 35 final exams and as many term papers due in a week, i would say assigning grades is the worst part of being a teacher. do you judge by performance and accomplishment alone? how i'm port in his effort or

movement? should we air on the side of kindness or grade inflation? or insist on it terms of standards, whatever those arse. in my own life grades have always been a fixation. when i was little my report cards were speckled with use, for unsatisfactory. teachers would say it needs improvement. in high school, i regularly flouted pedagogical authority and would often receive shockingly poor marks. the first grading period of my senior year i earned, and let me stress that verb, a d in english. as for college i struggled for two years to break out of the category of the hard-working b- student. i did eventually but by then the psychological damage was done.

in any given moment since i assumed everyone around me was smarter than i was, more naturally gifted, quicker witted and probably capable of understanding bigger terms. people snicker when i met that i can't fathom what was met by the world was everything that is the case. they look pity in late when i confess that all of those intuitive aspects of digital technology are not intuitive to me. with concerted effort i can follow instructions but don't ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smart phone. my own $20 no kia kia from radioshack has features that even now are mysterious. what for instance is a immediate net. don't even start start to explain, it won't mean anything to me. long ago i realized my real talent could be reduced to a

single word, doggedness. i put in in ordinance amounts of time if i find something that interests me. i will consult experts, and then suddenly drop whatever it is a move on. for use i ran or exercised every day. i wore size 33 slacks, that is in the waste not the length. then one day, i stop. now i am stopped. now i am embarrassed to get into my pajamas at night. my house itself is in shambles, classic men's clothing, manual tempers typewriters, scores of of thrift shop neckties and quite a few books. okay thousands of books. many of them in boxes, in the basement.

i have actually got six hawking double side bookcases purchased from borders when they went out of business just sitting in my garage waiting for space to put them in. my wife draws the line at the dining room even though we could easily eat our meals on trays. people can be so judgmental too. i have even heard words of compulsive obsessive and hoarding spoken in my presence. that last sound especially harsh. i really need all these heaped up newspapers in the hallway, okay that was a joke. i have pretty impressive stacks of old issues of the times supplement. you can never tell when you want to settle down with an article of roman coins. anyway, that is why i dislike grades. people are individual so how can you reduce them to an a, b, or see.

or sometimes to a d along with an invitation to stop by for a quiet chat with the high school principal. [applause]. if you like my review or if you have read any of my books you may like this one. it is a little more personal, a little more washington in some ways than the others but i meant it to be fun and i think you'll find it to be fun. i will go back to talking some more but i want to see if their questions to begin with. if there are please come to the microphone and ask away. while you are doing that in thinking, i will give you another sample. , we have a question coming.

>> i guess i will force it into a question. i know if you remember 30 years ago. >> - do i ever. >> that is the first job i had coming back to work. i remember up to the desk with the books up to hear and remember he made the clerk to, and the date and the ho biography. >> i worked there you know. no. >> you didn't know i work there? >> i don't need to ask a question that i can tell. >> when i first came to washington i only came here because my then girlfriend and now wife was here.

if you are to spill your glass of merlot on a rembrandt she is the one who would take care of it. she was working at the library of congress. i came here in top part-time as an adjunct at au. i was offered a couple of teaching jobs but in no places that mary wanted to move to such as houston. so i stayed here in washington and became for a rile a technical writer for a computer company. much of this this can be gleaned from my earlier books. for a number of months, maybe half a year, i worked on sunday afternoons in book market in the corner of calvert and connecticut. this was a really crummy paperback book exchange. he would take anything and exchange, telephone books, high school annuals, anything. my job was to work there for three hours in return for credit

and i would get the equivalent of $5 per hour and i would have to take that in paperbacks. it got me out of the house, high like to be around books. plus, one day a couple came in with five or six boxes of new hardback first editions. turned out to be alan and pat hearn, they had these books for a wild and hadn't been able to sell them. they were they were essentially going to give them to peter. i doubt they ever found a paperback they wanted. so i was shelving them and looking at them as one does. it was an author from my hometown so i bought it. it was a mint, first it titian, now inscribed from me from toni

morrison. says something like for michael, homeboy. so that is quite an expensive book these days. i did make out ultimately at the book market there and connecticut. are there other questions? please to think of questions and go to the mic so they can hear them. but i will repeat the question just in case. >> maybe you could say more, how is it 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 very existence of this bookstore and the friday books and it shows that in the minds of washington that is one of the great reading towns of the country. plus, politicians it is hard to

imagine i know occasionally do read books. we have all the people who work for the government, often despised by the rest of the country but who are friends of. i know they are readers and serious intellectual people. it is not so lonely. i once thought of moving to new york and taking a job there. an old friend of mine and editor once said to me at the time, i should stay in washington and quoted an old latin take. better the first man in ostia then the second man in rome. [laughter] so i stayed in ostia. other questions? >> i want to ask you how are the titles reviewed how do you select them.

>> the question is how are the titles i review selected? for many years, when when i was an editor and writer, and staffer at the post i was able to pick books i was pretty sure i was able to like. if i didn't like it i would put on my editors had an assignment to someone else. for the past ten or 12 years as a contract writer i'm able to suggest books to my editors that i would like to review. for the most part they will indulge me. every so often they will ask me to do a book that i hadn't thought about writing about and i almost always say yes to keep the balance going. when i write for other places, they will send me a book and say i hope you'll want to write about this for us. i always want to write about it for him. they are the the best

paying market in the country. so for other magazines other than the post, i am usually offered books. for the post 80% are ones i choose myself. >> in fact it is clear on one extent that washington is that a literary and artistic town in the washington post is by clear shot the biggest winner of pulitzer prizes and criticism. whereas it hasn't one for political sorts of writing. so somehow, some white the washington post. >> i trained all of the other pulitzers. [laughter] >> the weird thing is it is quite a selection, is people who

write about movies, music, art, fashion. >> you have to remember this is the washington post. it is one of the traitorous newspapers and they will have great newspapers writing for them. >> ..

used to have a monthly conversation. i cherish the book club. it was a science fiction novel people could debate mainstream. the citizens undergo sexual changes.

they had its interest together. look at the book is what you need a pic book club. when you start talking about any work of art the question to ask yourself is the medical poetry so what species is this? you don't want to judge the same

standards. they have different names and goals and you have to understand what those goals are and remember when valentine's day the sentence was it all credibility in and they were quite wonderful books. they fit all the requirements of an easy read. they were successful. think about what species of utterance is. >> i would be curious to your

opinion of covering foreign affairs they started out heading off toward. we wish we hadn't gotten involved in all of this. people have written about the release and i can think of the citizen. >> i do question and this might not be popular having lived in the country's most recently but then there's a lot more intellectual curiosity as well

as the political elite which i think like much of america was too quick to go. [inaudible] there seems to be a thicker sports section. >> i do like to read "the wall street journal"'s guide to what my masters are up to. [laughter] [inaudible] [laughter] how did you learn to develop the ability you have that quality

and i've read several books that you'd recommended. who do you think is the finest writer of the 20th century? first how do we help people with my reviews. when i was still learning my craft i might spend two hours on the first couple of sentences trying to find the right tone, the right verbiage into the right way to appeal to a reader. if you book a strong voice i

would connect things. or the opposite i would try to find some staff. i found that i've written enough reviews i could sit down and type almost anything. what is the most interesting aspect?

and then as i write i do try to alternate. some have more than others but a lot of times i don't know how i'm going to do that until he gets to the right paragraph. it doesn't always work that way. sometimes it is a struggle. in my case i said make it faster i don't like anything to be too slow. this is one reason i think of myself not as a critic but as a literary journalist i don't want

things to sound sober and epidemic and to my mind tedious. i've read a lot of books and then i realized it has to deal but that isn't my goal. my goal is [inaudible] and if i like it i might make other people like it, too mac. i hope they will give it a try. it was the great latin american return the 21st century?

[inaudible] those are the two that come to mind. i've written about them both. they are wonderful writers but as it was is called in the 60s and 70s there was a wonderful story it was a portuguese translator the publishers asked him to translate and he said it's back for five years. [laughter] >> thank you very much. >> i'm from syracuse new york i always understood how it was a fun experience ever.

what do you think of the idea of reading the biography of james blake at the same time; d. think that is a good approach click >> what but do i think of that biography? i don't think that a biography will help you too much. let's get into the realistic. i think that you just need to read slowly and there was a good book that was helpful but i think that they they kind of plunge into it and read it to. it's fun to dip into and the

wonderful passage. >> if you are going to talk about the washington bookstores can you say anything about moonstone books? >> it was the purveyor of science fiction. it was a wonderful place because all bookstores are wonderful places. some are better in certain areas than others. if you're interested in science fiction bookstores are the way to go.

>> you enjoy reading a lot of clearly. >> sometimes. >> if you don't enjoy a book that you are reading to finish the book or do you just have to sort of and perspective how you are approaching a? because myself i have to read a lot for school -- >> my view is unless you are getting paid to review the book that said you have to recognize some demand more than others and just because you think he seems to be doing all sorts of weird things with language and i don't really understand it it just might mean that you're not in the right space in your mind to read it now but i've always said just try to work outside of the comfort zone.

they need all the help they can get. [laughter] if you just sit back and keep reading week after week there is a difference actually. you need to challenge yourself but there are times you do feel like going forward and at other times you might want to say i'm ready to read the recognitions so you give it a shot. it's much easier than you think. >> another question click >> you sound like you come from a small town. how did someone from that

background come to be interested in this? spinach you can read my memoir growing up in that account until the age of 19 is. i read for excitement. why would you bother? as you grow older somebody told me -- you just go from there.

where does it come from? i don't know, my father never read a book in his life. in the opening pages that talk about my mother sitting on the dining room floor just turning the pages of these little golden books and they look at the little bunny and the rabbit and some of these books gave my mother such pleasure. i said maybe there's something to this she likes them so much but i wasn't a good reader in school.

i often didn't pay attention to the teachers. i was a terrible student for much of my early school life. but the best thing you can do is read out loud to your shuttered or grandchildren. and the more likely they are to become readers. not to say they will become fanatical readers. how can they become a reader such as their father. i grew up in a place he had to find a book and i would spend saturdays looking for books and i read things in the library. it is a challenge to prevent the adventure growing up finding these books. my children were sounded by books.

they are not magical in a way that they are for me. >> the second half of my question -- however society can we develop more? children need to be ready to and if they are not -- they need to see their parents read. if the kids look around and see their parents watching television or playing video games, kids aren't dumb, i'm not going to read, my folks don't do that we are going to play video games.

>> for the pleasure of that which two or three or four books have you gone back to read the most? spinach two or three or four. [laughter] >> i'm a great leader and reading. the first time you read it you are getting the plot of how it works. i don't do a lot of rereading.

i just want to read new things that i haven't read yet. a lot of these books are from the past and those wonderful. i've kind of forgotten and i want to read them. there's about a year there was about a year of his life in the second world war about his despair. his wife left him and he can't

go to france because of the german invasion. i wrote my dissertation on this [inaudible] she was in the napoleonic army of the page. he has the romantic sensibility. i wanted to be sophisticated to a point.

i recognize i could never be those things and have that kind of boyish charm. you're supposed to have this command and as i said nothing reminds me of anything else. i know i can't do that. to choose each now and each verb as much as i would like to have times i hope that answers your question. i mentioned i had a d. in english when i was in high school. not many kids went to college

maybe 20 out of the graduating class. i wasn't sure i would go to college. i had no money. so i said i have no money. if you give me a scholarship in the job i will work really hard and you will be proud of the monday. i scored phenomenally well on the standardized tests and they said okay. so the books that were most important of a in a up until that point in my life. ayn rand atlas shrugged in heart

of darkness. if i had six i would have picked dale carnegie. they are a good pairing. carnegie says to learn to think in terms of the other person how to interact with people speak if i had fallen so low that if i had to choose i would have chosen the book.

[laughter] other questions? >> i had a quick follow up other the autobiography about the reading of nonfiction. >> i would say three quarters of my reading. if you look at my reviews i admire my colleague. i could never do that in a million years. there was a motion in heartbreak and tragedy is. so i have to wait a couple of weeks before i start another

book so there were some other kind of books in between. i was in a student and high school and went to college about my first essay i got an f.. >> i got a d+. >> you are way ahead of me. >> the greatest insult is that it came back coffee stained. my question is not to do with that though. the review and how you pick books, so many writers always have a hard time getting reviewed or even noticed. so how do you fare out of the

unknown out there? >> there is considerable pains to figure out the less well known. over the course of the year i do business time or sometimes i will do roundups and for strange titles that i've heard were interesting i feel it's important to keep. there is a lot out there besides the bestseller list. politics and prose gives you the choice but if you go to wal-mart week after week after week my job is to try to find those books and i have to review a

number of them in the university press title for fantasy and fiction. some of my closest friends. one of the records in this book is about the convention in massachusetts each year. >> of curiosity and a governor said he read four or five books a week. >> many of people read about the day. but it takes me forever to read anything but i had no other life

practically. but it's where elect to spend my time so i need more than that. i go back to these things and i read that stuff the pieces. my life is involved with the world of literature grandiosely. i'm not just cranking through the books. it's how many books there are. >> the eccentric to more questions.

>> where do you keep your editor award? [laughter] >> that is my name in the baker street of regulars in the 1930s there's about 300 investment members. it's worse than the sherlock holmes story but at one point he turns and says this is a case for going to go pike and i'm going to stand now. he sits in the club and all of the news of the city comes in as he says the number of stories.

add to be changed because of the controversy that they've written a number of stories about glenville pike to solve the mystery. all sorts of things where he becomes involved and continue to write more. i wonder if you are frustrated because there were a lot of books out. you get some better