A Reading Diary
2004
First Published
3.53
Average Rating
248
Number of Pages
While traveling in Calgary, Alberto Manguel was struck by how the novel he was reading (Goethe's Elective Affinities ) seemed to reflect the social chaos of the world in which he was living. An article in the daily paper would suddenly be illuminated by a passage in the novel; a long reflection would be prompted by a single word. He decided to keep a record of these moments, rereading a book each month, and forming A Reading Diary : a volume of notes, reflections, impressions of travel, of friends, of events public and private, all elicited by his reading. From Don Quixote (August) to The Island of Dr. Moreau (February) to Kim (April), Manguel leads us on an enthralling adventure in literature and life, and demonstrates how, for the passionate reader, one is utterly inextricable from the other.
Avg Rating
3.53
Number of Ratings
1,356
5 STARS
19%
4 STARS
34%
3 STARS
32%
2 STARS
10%
1 STARS
5%
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Author
Alberto Manguel
Author · 27 books
Alberto Manguel (born 1948 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980) and A History of Reading (1996) The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008), and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991). Manguel believes in the central importance of the book in societies of the written word where, in recent times, the intellectual act has lost most of its prestige. Libraries (the reservoirs of collective memory) should be our essential symbol, not banks. Humans can be defined as reading animals, come into the world to decipher it and themselves.
