Chow down on crab cakes with Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda as we discuss the convention at which he thought he was about to be punched out by Harlan Ellison, the book he wants to write but which he realizes he could probably never publish, how discovering E. F. Bleiler's <em>Guide to Supernatural Fiction</em> opened a whole new world for him, whether he faced judgment from his peers for believing Georgette Heyer is as important as George Eliot, why he wants to be buried with a copy of <em>The Count of Monte Cristo</em>, how Beverly Cleary's <em>Henry Huggins</em> is like a Proustian madeleine, the way he navigates the tricky act of reviewing the fiction of friends, the word he used which annoyed Gene Wolfe, and much more.
