Synopses & Reviews
An absolute must-read for anyone who loves books In Closing Time, Joe Queenan shared how he became a voracious reader to escape a joyless childhood. Now, like many bibliophiles, he fears for the books that once saved him. In One for the Books, Queenan examines the entire culture of reading and what books really mean in peoples lives today. What does it suggest if a person has no books displayed in his living room? Can an obsession with reading prove detrimental to ones well being? How useful are covers in selling books? Queenans many fansas well as anyone who loves books and readingwill want to join him on his unforgettably funny and moving journey.
Synopsis
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a bookthat string of confused, alien ciphersshivered 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.
About the Author
Joe Queenan is the author of seven books and a regular contributor to The New York Times, Barron’s and The Los Angeles Times, a columnist for Chief Executive, and writes about movies and music for Great Britain’s The Guardian. Formerly an editor at Forbes and Spy, television critic at People, and a columnist at TV Guide, GQ, Smart Money, Men’s Health, Barron’s Online and Movieline, his stories have appeared in scores of national publications, including The New Republic, Time, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Observer, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Us, Golf Digest, The Weekly Standard, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Vogue, Town and Country, Allure, and New York. His work has appeared overseas in The Independent, The Spectator, The Toronto Globe and Mail, the Times of London, and Bon. Queenan has been a guest on "The Late Show with David Letterman", "The Daily Show", "Today", "Good Morning, America", "Charlie Rose" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", a frequent guest on "Imus in the Morning", and appeared more than two-dozen times on "Politically Incorrect". He regularly writes and hosts radio features for the BBC, and for three years was host of the BBC weekly radio program "Postcard from Gotham". In 2005, he won a Sports Emmy for his work on HBO’s "Inside the NFL". He is married, with two children, and lives in Tarrytown, N.Y.
Table of Contents
The Last Page The Last Page
Acts of Reading
Reading Shadows
The Silent Readers
The Book of Memory
Learning to Read
The Missing First Page
Picture Reading
Being Read To
The Shape of the Book
Private Reading
Metaphors of Reading
Powers of the Reader
Beginnings
Ordainers of the Universe
Reading the Future
The Symbolic Reader
Reading within Walls
Stealing Books
The Author as Reader
The Translator as Reader
Forbidden Reading
The Book Fool
Endpaper Pages
Endpaper Pages
Notes
Index