"Obsessive? Perhaps. Deeply satisfying? Unquestionably."

In today's Books section of The Washington Post, weekly columnist and

admitted bibliophile Michael Dirda discusses David Mason's The Pope's Bookbinder. "David Mason's absorbing memoir might be summed up by a button I recently acquired," Dirda writes: "'Life? Of course I have a life. It's a life filled with books.'" 

Tracking some of the best episodes and aphorisms in the book, from the Alice In Wonderland emergency buoy to the phrase that seems to speak to everyone in this crazy biz (“For anyone who might not know the difference between a job and a vocation, a vocation is a job where you don’t earn enough to live on”), Dirda situates Mason's memoir among the best of its kind: "Early on in this rambling, easygoing account of his career, Mason mentions three outstanding classics of that tiny subgenre: Charles Everitt’s The Adventures of a Treasure Hunter, David Randall’s Dukedom Large Enough and David Magee’s Infinite Riches. The Pope’s Bookbinder belongs on the same shelf."

Not too shabby, huh? Happy fourth of July. Keep an eye out for more Mason reviews soon.