A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel

A Reader on Reading

by Alberto Manguel

Yale University Press, 2010
First edition
Black and white illustrations in text,
ISBN 9780300159820
Hardcover, dustjacket

Condition: Near Fine
minor edge and shelf wear with minor rubbing and bumping to corners and covers.  Dustjacket very good with minor chips, Mylar covered (see photographs)

“When the world becomes incomprehensible … when we feel unguided and bewildered, we seek a place in which comprehension (or faith in comprehension) has been set down in words.  Thus writes internationally acclaimed author Alberto Manguel in the thirty-nine reflections on the joy and solace of literature that make up A Reader on Reading.  For Manguel, the activity of reading, in its broadest sense, defines our species.  “We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everything” he writes: “In the landscape, in the skies, in the faces of others, and, of course, in the images and words that our species creates.”  In A Reader on Reading, the narratives of Jonah, Homer, and Dante; topics ranging from Pinocchio to comics, from Borges to Che Guevara; and especially Lewis Carroll’s Alice books guide Manguel’s nuanced understanding to him as a boy, the Alice books remain his most steadfast and spirited literary companions.”