Reader on Reading

In this major collection of his essays, Alberto Manguel, whom George Steiner has called "e;the Casanova of reading,"e; argues that the activity of reading, in its broadest sense, defines our species. "e;We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everything,"e; writes Manguel, "e;landscape, the skies, the faces of others, the images and words that our species create."e; 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 "e;numinous memory palaces we call libraries"e; also figure in this remarkable collection. For Manguel and his readers, words, in spite of everything, lend coherence to the world and offer us "e;a few safe places, as real as paper and as bracing as ink,"e; to grant us room and board in our passage.