A History of Reading

Description

This post is also available in: العربية (Arabic)

A History of Reading

This book has been translated by Arab Scientific Publishers 

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.

PRAISE

Praise for A History of Reading:

“Ingenious…a veritable museum of literacy. One feels envious of his passion…through it, his gift becomes our own.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Manguel has taken on the daunting subject of our own passion for books and succeeded in turning it into a passionate book of his own.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“No one who follows Manguel’s narrative to its conclusion need ever again feel guilty about putting off errands, chores, the bills, the kids, sleep—whatever—and curling up with a good, or even a great, book.”—Newsweek

“Manguel is a generous companion…he remains, in the proper sense of the word, an ‘amateur,’ a lover rather than a specialist.”—George Steiner, the New Yorker

A History of Reading

This post is also available in: العربية (Arabic)