A Reading DiaryThe must-have literary book of the season! Over the course of a year, the bestselling author of A History of Reading spends a month with each of his 12 favourite books, allowing us to observe both the heart of the reading experience and how life around us can be illuminated by what we read. From June 2002 to may 2003, Alberto Manguel set out to reread twelve of the books he likes best, and to share with us, his “gentle readers,” his impressions and experiences in doing so. We travel with him as he leaves Canada to set up house in a medieval presbytery in France, visits his childhood home in Argentina and embarks on trips to various other places, always carrying a book in his hand. The result is an immensely enjoyable collection for every lover of reading — something between an intimate diary, a collection of literary thoughts, and the best travel memoir. A Reading Diary ranges from reflections on much-loved writers — Margaret Atwood, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Cervantes — to seductive introductions to others about whom you will want to know more, such as Sei Shonagon and Adolfo Bioy Casares, simultaneously providing insights into the world of today, its changing seasons and pleasures, its shifting politics and wars — all illuminated by the great novel he is reading at the time. A Reading Diary is a walk through a year’s worth of best beloved books in the company of an eclectically learned friend. Touching on themes of home and wandering, memory and loss, Alberto Manguel perfectly traces the threads between our reading and our lived experience. Excerpt from A Reading Diary: June Saturday We have been in our house in France for just over a year, and already I have to leave, to visit my family in Buenos Aires. I don’t want to go. I want to enjoy the village in summer, the garden, the house kept cool by the thick ancient walls. I want to start setting up the books on the shelves we have just had built. I want to sit in my room and work. On the plane, I pull out a copy of Adolfo Bioy Casares’s The Invention of Morel, the tale of a man stranded on an island that is apparently inhabited by ghosts, a book I read for the first time thirty, thirty-five years ago. . . . |
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adventures American asked become believe Bioy Borges Brás Cubas Buenos Aires Buzzati called Canada Canadian century Cervantes characters Charlotte Chateaubriand Conan Doyle's dead death detective novels diary Don Quixote Doyle dream Drogo Eduard Elective Affinities English everything existence eyes Fate father feel fiction FRIDAY garden German ghost Goethe hero Holmes Holmes's human imagine Invention of Morel Joseph Roth Kafka Kipling L'écume des jours landscape later live London look Machado de Assis Memoirs memory Mole MONDAY Moreau morning Morstan murder narrator never night once Paris Perhaps Pillow-Book poem reader realize remember Richard Outram Sancho SATURDAY says seems Sei Shonagon Shonagon Sign of Four someone stone SUNDAY Surfacing Tartar Steppe tells things thought THURSDAY tree TUESDAY walk Watson WEDNESDAY Willows window woman words writing wrote