A Reader on Reading
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
Alberto Manguel
View Inside
Format: PaperPrice: $37.00
An intimate and exhilarating journey through the world of books by the internationally celebrated author
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.
“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
“F
“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
‘“There are”, writes Manguel, “certain books that, in themselves, are an ideal library.” This book might be one of them.’ — Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times
“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
‘Manguel is a true polymath, and A Reader on Reading is a kind of a primer, or perhaps a masterclass. It’s like listening to Barenboim on Beethoven…The range and complexity of Manguel’s sympathies and readings is extensive and baroque; a concerto grosso.’ — Ian Sansom, The Guardian
‘Manguel weaves his recollections into literary musings…his overall argument is compelling.’ — Edward King, Sunday Times
'Manguel is extraordinarily well read. His erudition and wisdom make him the most stimulating of literary companions.' — Clive Davies, Writing Magazine
'This is reading, and it is truly marvellous.' — Andrea Goldsmith, Australian Book Review
“Manguel ranges from the Sumerian Epic of Gilamesh to Borges’s Infinite Library of Babel, wearing his erudition lightly and never failing to cast light on the texts.”—PD Smith, The Guardian
“…..Spellbinding, thought-provoking and deeply satisfying….”—Good Book Guide
“As a treatise on the magic of literature, A Reader on Reading is near definitive.”—Cian Taylor, Irish Times
Publication Date: June 28, 2011
12 b/w illus.
