Customer Reviews

Browser's Ecstasy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Books are a potential delight to all of our senses and many dimensions of our minds. It is entirely too simple and limiting to think of books as their physical embodiment of paper, ink and binding. Yet, if you are like me, you haven't exactly thought about them as potential magic carpets, strolling minstrels, and companions against the night. That's where you have stalled thinking. Mr. O'Brien's wonderful perception is about to take you outside the box (and the book) to consider what your real relationship is to these wonderful repositories of humanity.

This is one of the most imaginative and fun books that I have ever read! Mr. O'Brien takes books and turns them into metaphorical extensions of ourselves and our lives, and then connects it all back together in a beautiful stream of stories. You'll feel like you've suddenly become part of some modern Divine Comedy as you move through this fascinating book.

If we were in ancient Green times, we would think of this book as a philosophical treatment of what a book is and what bookness is, as well. Fortunately, we are in modern times, because the author can use vivid language and visions to entrance us . . . not unlike a series of tales out of the Arabian nights!

I especially enjoyed the continuing theme of whether the books are with us or not, and our connection to them.

You will never think about a book in the same way again after you read this work, and you'll be the better for your self-transformation.

The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation On Reading by Geoffrey O'Brien is a simply fascinating selection of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays about being absorbed by the written word, as well as the wonder and the pleasure of being transported by and through books to times, places, and thoughts heretofore unknowable to the solitary reader. An inspirational and welcome reflection on the pastime that marked the dawn of recorded human history down to the present day and into the forseeable future, The Browser's Ecstasy is enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone who has ever had a book transport them through journeys of the mind into lives, places, people, and events far from their own native habitat.

I really can't imagine what might have encouraged those reviews above. I found it exhausting to get through this--not particularly because the anecdotes O'Brien tells are boring but instead because O'Brien's tone itself is so off-putting, so agonizingly pretentious, that it actually ends up ruining what I think could be a very fascinating read. I can't recommend this book. Sorry.

Let,s face it ,books about books are boring and more than a little snooby.This is one.
I enjoy books about books,readers,writers,collectors and book people in general;but this left me cold.The author takes a bookish approach to some excellent basic ideas and ends up writing to a very small audience,who may very well be enthralled by it.
To me, the best part of the book was the cover.
Did her lover give her "The Browser's Estacy" to read while he immersed himself in "The Poetics of Meaning" or "The Master of the Day of Judgement"? Or did he ask her what she thought of this book. "Great!put me to sleep in no time at all".
No doubt, some will really like this book,but my preference is more towards "Passion for Books" by Rabinowitz & Kaplan or"The Anatomy of Bibliomania" by Holbrook Jackson.For me, these are exceptions to my opening remark.