A History of Reading

Reader friends, we share something very precious: we all know the pleasure of reading. If you are reading this blog, it is probably because reading has been part of your daily life for so long that you don't know how you could live without it. You probably know the calm and pleasure that comes from immersing yourself in a book you love, and you know that the thirst for reading is one that can never be completely quenched. Maybe you too feel helpless when you have nothing left to read, and a day of vacation is never complete without a good hour of reading.

And here I am, getting poetic (I apologize, mawkishness is not my strength). This is what happens: when I talk about reading, I go gaga. And that's probably what the person who gave me the book was thinking of A History of Reading.

Summary

Alberto Manguel is a great lover of reading and languages in general. Polyglot, novelist, translator and author, you could say that he spends his life immersed in books. Look at his personal library of more than 30,000 books: who would you trust more to talk about the love of reading?

In A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel explores the reasons why humans love to read. Rather than an exhaustive research, this is a playful account, often using historical anecdotes to address a larger subject, and taking many detours as the author sees fit.

Impressions

I would not have said the same thing a few years ago, but having studied literature, I already knew many of the things that are explained in this book. It was explained to me that reading was mostly done aloud for a very long time and that reading in one's head is a relatively recent phenomenon. I knew the history of the printing press, what the book was before and what it became after, and several small things like that. I didn't know the specific anecdotes the author used to make his history of reading, which were quite interesting, but frankly, I don't think they are part of the general knowledge. As a staunch atheist, I had a little trouble with all the religion involved in the story, but admittedly it has played a crucial role in our literary history and is not boring.

But what I appreciated most was the author's love for reading that was evident on every page. I could tell by the thousand and one little comments slipped in here and there that I was reading the words of a fellow reader: someone who loved to read at least as much as I did. I had a strange feeling that I was getting to know myself better. That's what happens when you notice that you're not special, and that the world is full of people like you.