Review by Choice Review
What is reading about? Why and when and where do readers read? What are the pleasures of being read to? What happens when authors and translators read? What is the importance of memory? What are the attractions of forbidden books? What does illustration lend to reading? These and many other questions are examined in this original, stimulating study. Manguel (translator, editor, anthologist, and novelist) treats his subject with sure erudition, weaving between the fourth millenium BCE, when clay tablets carried a "few discrete markings," through the Middle Ages, when scribes read and copied manuscripts, to the modern reader "seated at a desk, chin in hand where the text unfurls, progresses, grows and takes root." Manguel provides 22 brief essays on topics such as "Private Reading," "The Shape of a Book," "Stealing Books," and "Metaphors of Reading," which can be read separately or together. Manguel refers to a host of readers and writers: on a typical page he may cite Dante, Lady Murasaki, Saint Augustine, Colette, and Ray Bradbury. Reading can never be final, since "We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A." In the "Endpaper Pages," Manguel ingeniously summarizes an imaginary "History of Reading," which he would like to read. It would be "eclectic ... amicably written, accessible and yet erudite, informative and yet reflective"--thereby characterizing his own remarkable book. Highly recommended for academic readers, all levels. D. C. Dickinson; emeritus, University of Arizona
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Reading, Manguel tells us, is almost as essential to our existence as breathing. How did this come to be, and how has reading shaped our minds and our cultures? These are big, complex questions, but Manguel, who has devoted his life to books, is able, by virtue of assiduous research and creative analysis, to answer them, delighting his enraptured readers in the process. Much of the charm of this highly original history lies in the autobiographical sketches Manguel, who has lived all over the world, includes, from his own childhood epiphany when he realized he could read, to an account of his experiences reading aloud to the blind writer Jorge Luis Borges. Manguel spices his discussion of such rich topics as "metaphors of reading," books and religious traditions, book design, and the voluptuousness of reading with profiles of the likes of Petrarch, Proust, Kafka, Colette, and Whitman. Then, because one can't talk about books without talking about libraries, he offers a lively portrait of Callimachus, the clever fellow who organized the legendary lost library of Alexandria. Unique, enlightening, and as captivating as a celebration of reading should be. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1996)0670843024Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Reading, Manguel asserts in this encyclopedic and self-indulgent exploration, has such "a particular quality of privacy" that one "can transform a place by reading in it." An erudite yet entertaining conversation with the reader, Manguel's History ranges over languages and literatures from prebook ages to the present. The Argentine-born author, a translator and editor (The Dictionary of Imaginary Places), explains how, why and what we read. A book is not a mere object, he contends; whether read or listened to, a book may move emotions or change minds, a temptation that may prompt a translator not to be, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, "like his author" but to attempt "to excel him." Although there is a logic in the telling, and Manguel proceeds from the biology and psychology of reading and listening to a quirky history of books from the incised tablet to the computer screen, the narrative, like gossip, can be accessed anywhere. Manguel seemingly covers 6000 years of book-reading history, assisted by 140 woodcuts, drawings and photos. His history is not for every reader's palate, yet every reader who regrets the omission of a favorite story about reading will attest thereby to the book's many delights. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Writer, translator, and editor Manguel (In Another Part of the Forest, LJ 6/15/94) has produced a personal and original book on reading. In 22 chapters, we find out such things as how scientists, beginning in ancient Greece, explain reading; how Walt Whitman viewed reading; how Princess Enheduanna, around 2300 B.C., was one of the few women in Mesopotamia to read and write; and how Manguel read to Jorge Luis Borges when he became blind. Manguel selects whatever subject piques his interest, jumping backward and forward in time and place. Readers might be wary of such a miscellaneous, erudite book, but it manages to be invariably interesting, intriguing, and entertaining. Over 140 illustrations show, among other things, anatomical drawings from 11th-century Egypt, painting of readers, cathedral sculptures, and stone tables of Sumerian students. The result is a fascinating book to dip into or read cover to cover. For public and academic libraries.Nancy Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, N.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A delightful set of interlinked essays that explore the history of reading, by a novelist (News From a Foreign Country Came, 1990) and anthologist (Other Fires, 1985, etc.). This is written more in the pursuit of learned pleasure than of pedantic knowledge, by a man plainly in love with books and reading. Its agreeably digressive path does not begin at the beginning and proceed chronologically, as one might expect a ``history'' to do. Rather, each chapter is a freestanding essay that takes up topics in the history of reading: the way reading has been taught and learned, how people read in public and in private, bookish means of divining the future, the idea of reading as a metaphor, the relation of that which is heard to that which is read. Manguel claims no governing concept here, but there is a striking idea that recurs in varied forms. It concerns what might be called the prerogative of the reader. The reader's imagination can transform a book ``into a message that deciphers for him or her a question historically unrelated to the text or to its author. This transmigration of meaning can enlarge or impoverish the text itself. . . . Through ignorance, through faith, through intelligence, through trickery and cunning, through illumination, the reader rewrites the text with the same words of the original but under another heading, re-creating it, as it were, in the very act of bringing it into being.'' This explains not only the ability of the Bible and the classics to speak to successive generations, but also clarifies the deeply personal appeal of any favorite book: It says what we need it to say, what we wish we could say for or about ourselves. Manguel's urbane, unpretentious tone recalls that of a friend eager to share his knowledge and enthusiasm. His book, digressive, witty, surprising, is a pleasure. (140 illustrations, not seen)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
