A history of reading
By: by Alberto Manguel.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: Viking
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 372
Subjects: Books and reading -- History
Description: At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers - shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the never-before-told story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-353) and index.