A History of Reading

Reviewed by Stephen Osborne

Alberto Manguel’s wonderful new book, A History of Reading, has been coming out gradually in several countries since the middle of the summer. The Canadian edition, which appeared in October (Knopf), has the best cover of them all. This is a beautifully conceived book, a perfect marriage of form and content. (Rumour has it that Manguel took seven years to write it, and everywhere in it we can feel that kind of care.) Everything you didn’t know you would be so eager to know about reading until you actually began reading about it is in this book—which is in a sense both an imaginary history and a history of imagination.