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Product Description
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Subtitled "A Year of Favourite Books," this small volume combines ruminations by Alberto Manguel on 12 novels, memories of childhood (when he first read many of these books), shards of poetry, events in the daily news that link to the books, visits of friends and neighbours, and the turn of the seasons in his garden, as well as numerous apt quotes from a variety of sources. Manguel is a voracious, generous, and astute reader and he includes works from across the globe: Don Quixote, Kim, The Pillow Book, Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, novels by H.G. Wells and Goethe. His astonishing literary range is evidenced by the inclusion of works from lesser-known South American writers (Bioy Casares and Machado de Assis), children's literature (The Wind in the Willows), and detective fiction (The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). His comments on the works are always intelligent, insightful, original, and engaging.
Manguel maintains a contemplative tone throughout, as befits a book written for the most part in a medieval presbytery, now his home (after a longtime residence in Canada) in southern France. In this reflective tone, he states: "I, of course, will disappear ... the books will be scattered.... As in the eye of a sculptor chiselling away at a stone, the whole will be all the more beautiful for our absence." Manguel's enthusiasms encourage the reader to visit or re-visit many of these literary worlds, but he is especially convincing in his discussions of Cervantes, Kipling, and Sherlock Holmes. There is no doubt Manguel loves libraries and books: "I explore my library like someone returning to his native land after an absence of decades." His gift is the ability to foster that same love in his readers. --Mark Frutkin
From Publishers Weekly
Writer and critic Manguel's (Reading Pictures) elegantly elliptical and wryly contemporary diary of cities revisited and books reread during 2002 and 2003 opens with a journey he undertakes to his birthplace, Buenos Aires, just after Argentina's economic crisis in December 2001. As Manguel's reading overlaps with jotted observations of Buenos Aires, he reflects on the meaning of homeland, and on memory. Nostalgia and the significance of cities—in personal and literary terms—are themes that preoccupy Manguel on further trips to London, Paris, Germany and Canada. Yet Manguel is less melancholic than thoughtful and joyfully postmodern. At home in rural France, his reflections range as widely as on his travels, emerging as he tidies his library, converses with writers Mavis Gallant and Rohinton Mistry, and receives visits from his adult children. His eclectic reading matter includes H.G. Wells, Conan Doyle, Margaret Atwood, Kipling and Goethe. And he quotes from many more writers: Chateaubriand, Virginia Woolf and Chesterton, to name but a few. Manguel delights in list making—whether of favorite detective novels, mad scientists or literary heroes. Manguel's exquisitely distilled style and gentle humility are pure pleasure. His diary is a gold mine of the unexpected, and his companionable, deeply cultivated persona will entrance all those who love to read and to ponder.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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