A History of ReadingA book for book lovers by a true lover of books! At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning, and at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist and editor Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the six-thousand-year-old conversation between words and that hero without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel brilliantly covers reading as seduction, as rebellion, and as obsession and goes on to trace the quirky and fascinating history of the reader’s progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to digital. |
Contents
ACTS OF READING | |
The Silent Readers | |
The Book of Memory | |
Learning to Read | |
The Missing First Page | |
Ordainers of the Universe | |
Reading the Future | |
The Translator as Reader | |
ENDPAPER PAGES | |
The Shape of the Book | |
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act of reading Alexandria ancient Anthony Comstock Aristotle audience became become Bible Biblia Pauperum Book of Hours Borges Buenos Aires Callimachus Cambridge catalogue centuries later chapters Christ Christian Church Comstock Constantine copy depicted early Emperor English eyes fiction French Geiler glasses Greek hand History of Reading Ibid imagine intellectual invention Jorge Luis Borges Kafka King Labé Labé's Lady Murasaki language Latin letters Libri listener literature lived London Louise Labé manuscript Martini’s Mary medieval memory mother never novels one’s Paris Petrarch Pillow Book Pliny poems poet public readings Quoted read out loud reader Rilke Roman Rome Saint Augustine scholar scribe scroll Sei Shonagon Sélestat sense shelves sibyl silent reading society someone sometimes stories tablets Tale of Genji translation verses Virgil voice volumes Walter Benjamin Whitman Wisdom woman women words writing written wrote York