4.0
A History of Reading
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.
RELEASED1997
PUBLISHERPenguin Books
LANGUAGEEN
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A Canadian Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. **The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel** *Reviewed by Peter Ackroyd, The Times May 8, 2008* There is an old superstition that books, alone in the night and the silence, whisper one to another; the library then becomes an echo chamber of words and syllables, conjuring up the great general drama of the human spirit. Libraries are legendary places. Libraries enter myth as well as history. Lost libraries, like that of Alexandria, are a reminder of the transience of human achievement and of human learning. “No place,” Samuel Jonson said, “affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.” [Read the whole review][1] (PDF) [1]: http://www.atelieraldente.de/manguel_0h4/documents/Ackroyd%20The%20Library%20at%20Night.pdf
4.0
A History of Reading
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.
RELEASED1997
PUBLISHERPenguin Books
LANGUAGEEN
A Canadian Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. **The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel** *Reviewed by Peter Ackroyd, The Times May 8, 2008* There is an old superstition that books, alone in the night and the silence, whisper one to another; the library then becomes an echo chamber of words and syllables, conjuring up the great general drama of the human spirit. Libraries are legendary places. Libraries enter myth as well as history. Lost libraries, like that of Alexandria, are a reminder of the transience of human achievement and of human learning. “No place,” Samuel Jonson said, “affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.” [Read the whole review][1] (PDF) [1]: http://www.atelieraldente.de/manguel_0h4/documents/Ackroyd%20The%20Library%20at%20Night.pdf
