Reading date

Reading is essential to life like breathing. Alberto Manguel traces the effects of written, read, and printed texts through different historical eras: he searched for them in many libraries around the world, but he also searched for them within himself. He remembers the first word he read, and talks about his great passion for reading since childhood, and tells the story of his relationship with the great blind writer Jorge Luis Borges, who used to read to him in Buenos Aires. Then he moves to the beginnings of writing, and to the art of printing books, literature, and the shape of the book, and to the act of reading and its authority. Manguel presents a select group of the world's greats who wrote and loved reading. He tells us about the Persian prince who carried his library consisting of 711,000 books on the back of a caravan of camels, classified alphabetically. He also recounts the story of the world's greatest book thief, Duke Lippre, or the story of Cuban tobacco workers who loved listening to book readings, which made them name their cigar types after novel heroes. This book is a story of great love; it is worth reading.