Read a diary -

Author: Alberto Manguel
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: Alberto Manguel is a private reader. A Reading Diary is a crystallization of the author's thoughts, associations, and memories recorded in diary form from June 2002 to May 2003, where he revisits a beloved work each month. In this book, the works he "loved long and deeply" and "revisited word by word with the power of the soul" include Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote from Spain, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Affinity from Germany, H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau from the United Kingdom, Rudyard Kipling's Gulliver, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, andFran?ois-Chrétien de Chateaubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Grave from France, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale from Canada, Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe from Italy, and Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book from Japan, among others. In addition to these works, the diary form allows the author to remain faithful to the rich emotions and endless associations he experienced while reading, freely and dynamically recording the of a thoughtful and sensitive reader's heart. Due to the author's broad cultural perspective and deep reading experience, characters, plots, landscapes, a sentence, or even a word in the works often evoke his profound reflections, while domestic life and travel experiences also awaken his rich historical memories. The author seems to pick them up effortlessly, bringing to the reader the political ideals of ancient Greek Aristotle, the story of Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly from China, the life insights of an Iraqi poet, the picaresque novel Tom Sawyer, the verses of Baudelaire, the transformed Gregor in Kafka's works, and land surveyors, all rushing before the reader's eyes. This scattered perspective yet all-encompassing writing style gives readers a sense of dazzling brilliance and inexhaustible beauty. Meanwhile, the author's recollections of his childhood and descriptions of his interactions with Borges and other friends evoke the fading dust of forgotten memories, bringing a sense of historical vicissitudes and leaving readers with familiarity and emotion. Alberto Manguel, the author of this book, is a renowned Canadian novelist, translator, literary critic, and publisher. This book is another masterpiece by him following A History of Reading. The tranquil and simple pastoral life has made Manguel a Don Juan who swims in the vast ocean of books, following the call of his heart. He spent a year revisiting twelve beloved literary classics and expressed his life's reflections through the interplay and reflection between the pages of the books and the world outside. Reading through the entire book, we often feel the author's deep love for nature and humanity, his concern for public events, and his strong sense of social justice. The central themes of the book include reflections on the roots of racial hatred, anxieties about the of human ambition due to technological development, and critiques of authoritarian and tyrannical regimes in history and reality. The author's the major issues in the real world. Therefore, Manguel chose to resist fate through reading and uphold the right of intellectuals to question history, reality, and life.