In one of BROWSING’s earliest essays, book critic Michael Dirda writes, “Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.” Remove the word “sometimes” and you practically have the thought on which this very site was founded. Although Dirda is certainly more high-minded than we here at BOOKGASM, he espouses what we espouse: the pure pleasure of reading.

Over and over again, that is the simple message behind BROWSING, a collection of 50 columns that themselves add up to an experience of pure pleasure. If at times uneven, that’s not Dirda’s fault, as the individual pieces were not conceived as a whole.

In fact, they’re not all about books. Occasionally, you’ll catch him writing about the inconvenience of travel or the tedium of grading papers, but mostly, yes, BROWSINGS sticks to what the author knows best, to what he breathes and sleeps: books. Books and books and books — of all glorious kinds, from French classics to THE HOBOKEN CHICKEN EMERGENCY. In general three- to four-page bursts, he picks a topic and makes us care about it as much as he does: 19th-century swashbucklers, Golden Age science fiction, anthologies, notebooks, used books, the thesaurus, the art of the title, even books on books.

Like the finest essayists of our time, he does so splendidly and seemingly without effort. Dirda doesn’t show up to look down on his readers, nor smother his Pulitzer Prize in our faces. He’s not here as a literary snob, but a friend sharing a passion: one that is palpable, tactile, infectious and, Kindles be damned, here to stay. —Rod Lott

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