Alberto Manguel
Born 1948
A Canadian Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor.
The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel Reviewed by Peter Ackroyd, The Times May 8, 2008
There is an old superstition that books, alone in the night and the silence, whisper one to another; the library then becomes an echo chamber of words and syllables, conjuring up the great general drama of the human spirit. Libraries are legendary places. Libraries enter myth as well as history. Lost libraries, like that of Alexandria, are a reminder of the transience of human achievement and of human learning. “No place,” Samuel Jonson said, “affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”
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Quotes
“I had done this all by myself. No one had performed the magic for me. I and the shapes were alone together, revealing themselves in a silently respectful dialogue. Since I could bare lines into living reality, I was all powerful. I could read.”
A History of Reading, p. 6 “We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but to read. Reading almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.”
A History of Reading, p. 7 “I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometric progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.”
A History of Reading, p. 19 “I judge a book by its cover; I judge a book by its shape.”
A History of Reading, p. 125 “The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest space. We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A.”
A History of Reading, p. 309
Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Books by Alberto Manguel in order
Books by Alberto Manguel in the order they were published, from The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980) to Packing My Library (2018).
- 1The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places1980 - 2Black Water
Black Water1983 - 3Other Fires
Other Fires1985 - 4Dark Arrows
Dark Arrows1987 - 5Black Water 2
Black Water 21990 - 6Meanwhile In Another Part Of The Forest
Meanwhile In Another Part Of The Forest1994 - 7A History of Reading
A History of Reading1996 - 8By the Light of the Glow-worm Lamp
By the Light of the Glow-worm Lamp1998 - 9Into the Looking-glass Wood
Into the Looking-glass Wood1998 - 10Reading Pictures
Reading Pictures2000 - 11The Second Gates of Paradise
The Second Gates of Paradise2000 - 12Kipling
Kipling2001 - 13The Gates of Paradise
The Gates of Paradise2001 - 14Stevenson Under the Palm Trees
Stevenson Under the Palm Trees2002 - 15The Library at Night
The Library at Night2003 - 16A Reading Diary
A Reading Diary2004 - 17With Borges
With Borges2004 - 18The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories2005 - 19Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey
Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey2007 - 20The City of Words
The City of Words2007 - 21A Reader on Reading
A Reader on Reading2010 - 22All Men Are Liars
All Men Are Liars2012 - 23The Traveler The Tower And The Worm The Reader As Metaphor
The Traveler The Tower And The Worm The Reader As Metaphor2013 - 24Packing My Library
Packing My Library2018