Readers for Life

Sander L. Gilman (Anthology Editor) Sander L. Gilman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Stand Up Straight! A History of Posture (Reaktion, 2018).Heta Pyrhönen (Anthology Editor) Heta Pyrhönen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki. She is the author or editor of many books including Reading Today (2018).

"Readers for Life, edited by Sander L. Gilman and Heta Pyrhöhnen, is a superb and dazzling collection of unusual and insightful memoirs concerning the value of reading by notable writers such as Salman Rushdie, Peter Brooks, Cristina Sandu and others. At a time when illiteracy is mounting throughout the world, this book urgently recalls how reading still opens the minds of young people to deal with the conflicts they face, not with guns but with imagination. What a joy to read how these writers have profited from reading!" - Jack Zipes, author of Speaking Out"Readers for Life will prompt lifelong readers to cast their minds back to their earliest immersion in storyworlds, to beloved books and the people who recommended them. From the spines of the volumes on the shelf, to vivid illustrations, to the reverberation of language, to the mental impressions and ideas shaping their perceptions of experience, the reading recalled by Gilman and Pyrhönen's contributors opens realms of possibility, invites adventures of perspective-taking, and encourages returns to both refreshing and challenging books." - Suzanne Keen, author of Empathy and Reading"This extraordinary book celebrates the rich array of experiences that reading offers, and the variety of responses that it nourishes. And it does so with individual gifts of grace in the form of essays from fourteen diverse and dedicated readers who bring together the wonders of the world and the worries of life. It shows how reading helps keep them in balance, and provides us with sometimes life-saving company when we are alone. And if we are ignorant, a book cannot laugh at us." - J. Edward Chamberlin, author of Storylines: How Words Shape Our World

• Setting the Scene Sander Gilman and Heta Pyrhoenen1 Ask Yourself Which Are the Books You Love Salman Rushdie2 Portable Magic Maria Tatar3 The Dream of an Intenser Experience Peter Brooks4 Reading a deux Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon5 A Life in Literature Philip Davis6 Reading (in) my Father's Shadow Heta Pyrhoenen7 Reading in Times of War Natalya Bekhta8 Reading as a Rambunctious Boy-Girl Laura Otis9 Figuring Stories, and Jumping Off the Page Pajtim Statovci10 Reading from the Spine Laura Oulanne11 The American Boy Daniel Mendelsohn12 A Typewriter's Travels Cristina Sandu13 What Did the Bear Think? A Chat with Michael Rosen14 Words After Sander GilmanReferencesWorks CitedContributorsPermissions