Alberto Manguel

"As far as one can tell, human beings are the only species for which the world seems made up of stories, Alberto Manguel writes. We read the book of the world in many guises: we may be travelers, advancing through its pages like pilgrims heading toward enlightenment. We may be recluses, withdrawing through our reading into our own ivory towers. Or we may devour our books like burrowing worms, not to benefit from the wisdom they contain but merely to stuff ourselves with countless words. With consummate grace and extraordinary breadth, the best-selling author of A History of Reading and The Library at Night considers the chain of metaphors that have described readers and their relationships to the text-that-is-the-world over a span of four millennia. In figures as familiar and diverse as the book-addled Don Quixote and the pilgrim Dante who carries us through the depths of hell up to the brilliance of heaven, as well as Prince Hamlet paralyzed by his learning, and Emma Bovary who mistakes what she has read for the life she might one day lead, Manguel charts the ways in which literary characters and their interpretations reflect both shifting attitudes toward readers and reading, and certain recurrent notions on the role of the intellectual: 'We are reading creatures. We ingest words, we are made of words...It is through words that we identify our reality and by means of words that we ourselves are identified.'"book jacket.

"From Atlantis to Xanadu, this Baedeker of make-believe takes readers on a tour of more than 1,200 realms invented by storytellers from Homer's day to our own." "Most every fanciful world from books and film is included: Shangri-La and El Dorado are here, as is Utopia, Tolkien's Middle-earth, and Carroll's Wonderland, as well as the Beatles' Pepperland, the Marx Brothers' Freedonia, and a strange little town called Stepford. The history and behavior of the inhabitants of these lands are described in detail and supplemented by more than 220 maps and illustrations that depict the lay of the land in a host of elsewheres." "Now brought up-to-date with dozens of new entries for such places as Jurassic Park, Salman Rushdie's Sea of Stories, and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, this volume is even more comprehensive and entertaining."--BOOK JACKET.

"While traveling in Canada, Alberto Manguel was struck by how the novel he was reading (Goethe's Elective Affinities) seemed to mirror the social chaos of the world he was living in. An article in the daily paper would be suddenly illuminated by a passage in the novel; a long meditation would be prompted by a single word. He decided to keep a record of these moments, rereading a book a month and forming A Reading Diary: a volume of notes, reflections, and impressions of travel, of friends, of events public and private, all elicited by his reading." "From Don Quixote (August) to The Island of Dr. Moreau (February) to Kim (April), Manguel leads us on an enthralling adventure in literature and life, and demonstrates how, for the passionate reader, one is utterly inextricable from the other."--Jacket.

"The Library at Night - a series of essays on what might call the Platonic idea of a library - reveals some of its author's intellectual range and magpie learning... [It] is an elegant volume, in both its design and its text... Alberto Manguel has brought out a richly enjoyable book, absolutely enthralling for anyone who loves to read and an inspiration for anybody who has ever dreamed of building a library of his or her own." - Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World