A Reader on Reading

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 roof and board in our passage.

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"'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) '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.' (Ian Sansom, The Guardian) 'In reading, he realises that there are a thousand and one stories to be told about books, each narrative or anecodote leading to and from another, in an infinite progression... A Reader on Reading is an invitation to readers to enter into a world of wonders.' (Iain Finlayson, The Times) "'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) 'Manguel weaves his recollections into literary musings... his overall argument is compelling.' (Edward King, Sunday Times)"

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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, With Borges, and Reading Pictures (Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction). He was born in Buenos Aires, moved to Canada in 1982, and now lives in France, where he was named an Officer of the Order for Arts and Letters. His most recent book is The Library at Night, also published by Yale University Press.

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