A Reading Diary : A Year of Favourite Books

While travelling in Calgary, Alberto Manguel was struck by how the novel he was reading (Goethe's Elective Affinities) seemed to reflect the social chaos of the world he was living in. An article in the daily paper would be suddenly illuminated by a passage in the novel; a long reflection would be prompted by a single word.

He decided to keep a record of these moments, rereading a book a month, and formed A Reading Diary: a volume of notes, impressions of travel, of friends, of public and private events, all elicited by his reading.

From Don Quixote (January) to The Sign of Four (October) to The Wind in the Willows (December), Manguel leads us on an enthralling adventure in literature and life, and demonstrates how, for the passionate reader, one is utterly inextricable from the other.

Praise for A Reading Diary:

'Ingenious...A veritable museum of literacy...One feels envious of his passion and grateful for this prodigious book: through it Manguel's gift becomes our own.'

New York Times

'Manguel's digressions are delightful, his anecdotes appealing, and his stories scintillating...The whimsical erudition and wry charm abounding in A Reading Diary would have pleased Borges.'

Boston Sunday Globe

'An elegant, quaint and sensitive meditation on the nature of reading.'

Times Literary Supplement

'Manguel's exquisitely distilled style and gentle humility are pure pleasure. His diary is a gold mine of the unexpected, and his companionable, deeply cultivated persona will entrance all those who love to read and love to ponder.'

Publishers Weekly

'The idea is attractively simple...[and] Manguel's book choice is pleasurably eclectic.'

Scotland on Sunday

'A delightfully companionable example of unpretentious erudition and an encouragement to its readers to keep a diary of this sort.'

Anita Brookner, Spectator