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Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life, 18 Books

In his stimulating book of essays the Pulitzer Prize winning critic Michael Dirda proclaims the following:
"What should a person know of the world’s literature? It has always seemed obvious to me that the great patterning works ought to lie at the heart of any structured reading program. By “patterning works” I mean those that later authors regularly build on, allude to, work against".
“Know these well," he says, "and nearly all of world literature will be an open book to you.”

This list was originally published in 2007 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.