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Loading... The History of Reading (original 1996; edition 1996)by Alberto Manguel
Work InformationA History of Reading by Alberto Manguel (1996)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Other books may do a better job of telling the chronological development of literacy , but none come as close to expressing the sheer joy of reading as this does. More of a literary biography than a true history, Manguel intertwines his well traveled, well read life with the life of the written word and asks some pointed questions along the way. At times I felt it was a little self indulgent and overly academic, but then the author switched from discussions of Greek philosophy to his joy at finding a set of Enid Blyton “Noddy” books in a bookstore in Cyprus, or talks about picking up a couple of manga volumes at a Japanese airport and spending the flight making up his own narrative to go with the art, and I remembered that he is first and foremost someone who just loves to read. This book was a very comfortable read. It makes one feel lowkey nationalistic about the act of reading books. I felt as if I was a torch bearer of an ancient culture going back millenia, which feeling was only exacerbated by the thoughts that most people don't read books anymore, and that in the future the number will only decrease, and already many consider reading books a waste of time, which could be true if one were to look at things purely from a price-benefit perspective. It is a very well researched and thorough book, well supplied with plates and illustrations.
Dieses nach seinem Erscheinen mit Recht viel gelobte Buch ist das Werk eines Universalgelehrten und eines begnadeten Erzählers zugleich. Es ist keine spröde Historie des Lesens von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, sondern eine kunstvoll durchkomponierte Ansammlung von Geschichten. Sie bewegt sich zwischen ganz unterschiedlichen Zeiten und Kulturen hin und her und umfaßt nicht zuletzt die sehr persönliche Leserbiographie des Autors.
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers - shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the never-before-told story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM. No library descriptions found. |
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