In this major collection of his essays, Alberto Manguel, whom George Steiner has called “the Casanova of reading,” argues that the activity of reading, in its broadest sense, defines our species. “We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everything,” writes Manguel, “landscape, the skies, the faces of others, the images and words that our species create.” Reading our own lives and those of others, reading the societies we live in and those that lie beyond our borders, reading the worlds that lie between the covers of a book are the essence of A Reader on Reading.
The thirty-nine essays in this volume explore the crafts of reading and writing, the identity granted to us by literature, the far-reaching shadow of Jorge Luis Borges, to whom Manguel read as a young man, and the links between politics and books and between books and our bodies. The powers of censorship and intellectual curiosity, the art of translation, and those “numinous memory palaces we call libraries” also figure in this remarkable collection. For Manguel and his readers, words, in spite of everything, lend coherence to the world and offer us “a few safe places, as real as paper and as bracing as ink,” to grant us room and board in our passage.
"Books jump out of their jackets when Manguel opens them and dance in delight as they make contact with his ingenious, voluminous brain."—Peter Conrad, The Observer
“In this excellent collection of essays. . . Manguel reminds us of the community we join every time we open a book, be it something new or a treasured volume from our youth.”--Publishers Weekly
"If there are such things as a musician’s musician and a writer’s writer, one could argue that Manguel (The Library at Night) is a reader’s reader.”--Library Journal
“Essays of this quality are worth reading, or rereading, wherever they are encountered.”--John Gross, New York Review of Books
“For those of us who are serious about books and literature, reading amounts to an almost sacred act. Many famous authors have extolled the pleasures of the printed page, of course, but to my mind none in recent years has done it so expertly or eloquently as Alberto Manguel. Happily, a collection of his best literary meditations is now on offer, A Reader on Reading, and it is a must for book lovers."--John Sledge, Mobile Press-Register
“The range of A Reader on Reading is in itself as intriguing as that of a good library. . . . A book full of good things.”--Michael Dirda, Barnes & Noble Review
“A meditation on ‘the art of reading’ . . . [and] a celebration of ‘the reader’s whims--trust in pleasure and faith in haphazardness.’ ”--The New Yorker
Internationally acclaimed as an anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, and editor, Alberto Manguel is the best-selling author of several award-winning books, including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places, A History of Reading, and, most recently, The Library at Night. Born in Buenos Aires, he moved to Canada in 1982, and now lives in France, where he was named an Officer of the Order for Arts and Letters.
Publisher: Yale University Press
Distributor: Yale University Press
Publication Date: 03-02-2010
Pages: 320
Measurements: 9.25in X 6.13in X 1.30lb
