Customer Reviews

A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books

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

 

 

About 3/4 of the way through Manguel's account of rereading one of his favorite books every month for a year, he writes "I realize that I think in fragments". This self-enlightenment serves as pretty good summation of his slim combination of literary criticism and memoir. Over the course of his project, he sets up a new home in rural France, takes trips to his native Argentina, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the UK, hosts visits from his adult children, and follows the buildup to the war on Iraq. All the while, his rereading occurs, and he manages to tease out relevant insights from his favorite works in a kind of free-associative rambling. A longtime editor, anthologist, and writer, Manguel is something of a professional reader, and can seemingly draw upon a vast trove of quotations and passages at will. Thus, there appear quote after quote from a wide range of texts from which Manguel draws parallels to the one he's reading at the moment. It's rather daunting to be confronted with such a wide-range of knowledge and anecdote, and it's to Manguel's credit that it never once seems like showing off or obscurantism. That said, only a certain kind of person is likely to really enjoy the book, and a quick listing the twelve books he reads is likely to be a very useful guidepost:

The Invention of Morel (Adolfo Bioy Casares)
The Island of Dr. Moreau (Wells)
Kim (Kipling)
Memoirs From Beyond the Grave (Chateaubriand)
The Rule of Four (Doyle)
Elective Affinities (Goethe)
The Wind in the Willows
Don Quixote (Cervantes)
The Tartar Steppe (Dino Buzzati)
The Pillow Book (Sei Shonagon)
Surfacing (Margaret Atwood)
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis)

So, essentially, a collection of eight world classics, several of which are "entertainments", one modern (ie. written in the last 50 years) novel, along with three relative obscurities. It goes almost without saying that the more of these you've read, the more likely you are to enjoy Manguel's ruminations of them. In sum, I have to admit that this is not at all the kind of writing I enjoy, but I know friends that would love it, and so it all comes down to personal taste. I did enjoy the profusion of lists that pop up in the book, as well as some odd little tidbits of history here and there and insights on the act of reading. I also found it rather amusing that one point, amidst all this rather high-culture rummaging, he mentions having read Thomas Harris's thriller "Hannibal" on the train.

Alberto Manguel has repeatedly shown himself to be good company to spend time with and this brief book only shores up that impression further. Each chapter is devoted to a different book he has read over the course of a year and the thoughts and associations that reading brings. It is part diary, part literary criticism, part commonplace book. For a man who has devoted himself to a lifetime of reading and writing, and who has lived an extraordinary global existence, the anecdotes and quotes he can pull together make for a enriching "conversation" spent in this man's company. A year's holiday for any reader, in the space of a few hours.

Unlike other `Reading Year' books, this one is concerned with revisiting old literary friends. Manguel chooses a single book a month and, in diary form, relates it to his current activities and life parallels. He selects his titles in advance, an eclectic mix from all over the world.

This short book oozes with erudition, and Manguel liberally sprinkles excellent quotes, observations, lists, and anecdotes throughout the text, all the while contemplating the larger questions of home, justice, nostalgia, memory, and war, among others. This meandering but thoughtful recording of a year of the author's life is extremely well-done.

While travelling in Canada, Alberto Manguel was struck by how the particular novel he was reading (Goethe's `Elective Affinities') seemed to reflect the social chaos of the world in which he was living. An article in a daily paper: a chance observation would suddenly be illuminated by a particular passage in the novel.

He decided to keep a record of such moments by rereading a novel each month and formed a volume of notes, of impressions and observations all elicited in some way by his reading.

This record has formed `A Reading Diary', and I think that many a reflective reader will enjoy it as much as I have. It matters not that I've not read many of the books referred to. I identify completely with the process of serendipity between the worlds we inhabit through reading and those we live in.

`We read what we want to read, not what the author wrote.'

This book is a delight: not just for what it contains but for the possibilities it unlocks.

This is the first of Alberto Manguel's books that I have read, and it most certainly won't be the last.

`This morning, I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they had no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don't know that I am their reader.'

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

i've thought long and hard about how to better record the connections that i make and wish to make when i'm reading books. then i found out that alberto manguel had written part of that discussion for me.

on book summaries and giving away plots:

I don't like people summing up books for me. Tempt me with a title, a scene, a quotation, yes, but not with the whole story. Fellow enthousiasts, jacket blurbs, teachers and histories of literature destroy much of our reading pleasure by ratting on the plot.

on writing in books (something i've only recently allowed myself to do)

I always write in my books. When I reread them, most of the time I can't imagine why I thought a certain passage worth underlining, or what I meant by a certain comment.

and then, i found i liked his reading tastes, that he's read books i haven't heard of. i imagined that it wouldn't be interesting reading about books i haven't read, but the snippets that he gives are enough that i can get the gist of the novel (and decide if i should read it) and figure out the point he's trying to make.

i found out about francois-rene de chateaubriand and his book memoirs from beyond the grave. with one excerpt, i knew i wanted to read it.

There are people who, while empires collapse, visit fountains and gardens.

threads of chateaubriand come up throughout what i've read of the book so far, and they're related to manguel's life, memories, surroundings. he relates passages and texts to remember (much in the way that chateaubriand himself encourages and finds).

from chateaubriand:

Our existence is so fleeting that if we don't record the events of the morning in the evening, the work will weigh us down and we will no longer have the time to bring it up to date. This doesn't prevent us from wasting our years, from throwing to the wind those hours that are for us the seeds of eternity.

when the last section on chateaubriand came, i had already inquired about an english copy. and then another perfect sentence:

Reading Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, I forget that it is Chateaubriand, not I, who is mourning.

i'm was to october at this point with firm mind to read chateaubriand and more manguel. i had also figured out how he's managed to be so thoughtful about his reads, something i truly needed to learn to do myself. first, he's choosing books based on whims and wants. no reading schedules, really, just, going with the flow of things.

by the end of the book, he'd read 12 books, one per month, with some diaries, letters and related material read throughout to help write about the books and fully understand them. that's the kind of reading year i'd like for 2012. slow and thoughtful, unrushed.

I feel uncomfortable having other people's books at home. I want either to steal them or to return them immediately. There is something of the visitor who outstays his welcome in borrowed books. Reading them and knowing that they don't belong to me gives me the feeling of something unfinished, half-enjoyed. This is also true of library books.

"A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books".

Manguel decides to re-read one book a month, and write about it as he goes about his life. He picks an eclectic mix of favorites. I found it interesting the way the books he chose related to his life. His thoughts on the books and the passages he enjoyed corresponded to whatever he was doing at that time. This makes it easy to see why we react differently to a book each time we read it. It also explains why we may dislike a book at first, but return to it at a different time and LOVE it.

I enjoyed this book, and I'm very glad I read it. I added a few titles to Mt. TBR, but the damage wasn't too bad. My only complaints were...

At times the writing seemed too fractured. In fairness, I suppose that's the way a diary is supposed to sound. Also, at one point he made a comment about the ignorance of English speaking readers that grated on me. He may have been right - who am I to say? I just felt that it was an unfair generalization and it nagged at me while I read.

Manguel loves to make lists. There are quite a few lists here. If you love books (which I'm assuming you DO), and you love lists, check out this one.

This is not a novel idea, as even I have kept a list of the books read each year for many years; by intention was to keep from re-reading the same things. This is "a volume of notes, refelctions, impressions of travel, of friends and events..." as he re-reads his favorite books. With all his traveling, you'd think he would be busy taking notes for his next book, but a diary is just what he kept, as his travels and life revolved around what he was reading.

It's a good to keep records, and that is the value of a diary of any kind. In my book lists, I would add the date I finished the book. At the time, who had a reason to write a short critique; I know someone who does, but his is not a diary per se, just a short comment on his feelings about the content and author.

The author of THE DICTIONARY OF IMAGINARY PLACES and READING PICTURES, he is well grounded in the business of reading and writing. His observations and opinions may not be the same as someone who lives in Tennessee, but that's the paradox of our global existence these days. It's good to at least try to understand how the other person thinks. All good minds don't think along the same avenues, and that's what makes us unique.

Alberto Manguel hits the nail on the head as he shows the relationship between the reader and the books read. At the deeper level of a serious reader it should become a conversation, as it does with Manguel.