A Good Time

If ever you wanted to know why reading books is so important and necessary to the quality of life itself, then you must read the PDF version of Michael Dirda’s beautiful guest lecture “Looking for a Good Time: Reading, Libraries, and the World of Books.” The address was given at Oberlin College in 2002 under sponsorship of the Friends of Oberlin College Library. Dirda is a graduate of Oberlin. You can find the PDF for download at https://www2.oberlin.edu/library/friends/talks/2002.dirda.pdf. I wish that I could reproduce the whole of it here. Michael Dirda was then Writer and Senior Editor for the Washington Post’s Book World. He had already won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism in 1993. He won a Mystery Writers of America Edgarâ Award in 2012. He still writes for the…