A history of reading

By Alberto Manguel

Subjects: Lezen, books, Lecture, Books, history, Livre, Boeken, Books and reading, history, Livres et lecture, Books and reading, Histoire, Geschichte, Lesekultur, open_syllabus_project, Lecture, Goût de la, History, Reading, Literature, history and criticism

Description: 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.