The History of Reading

by Manguel, Alberto (Author)

• ISBN13: 9780140166545
• ISBN10: 0140166548
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-10-01
• Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

The Last Page	p. 3
Reading Shadows	p. 27
The Silent Readers	p. 41
The Book of Memory	p. 55
Learning to Read	p. 67
The Missing First Page	p. 85
Picture Reading	p. 95
Being Read To	p. 109
The Shape of the Book	p. 125
Private Reading	p. 149
Metaphors of Reading	p. 163
Beginnings	p. 177
Ordainers of the Universe	p. 187
Reading the Future	p. 201
The Symbolic Reader	p. 213
Reading within Walls	p. 225
Stealing Books	p. 237
The Author as Reader	p. 247
The Translator as Reader	p. 261
Forbidden Reading	p. 279
The Book Fool	p. 291
Endpaper Pages	p. 309
Notes	p. 321
Index	p. 361
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.