Between this class and all of my other classes, I easily carry around with me over a dozen books over any given week. And since many of my courses are in higher level English classes, having well over a dozen books is to be expected. The course books that are assigned for my classes are primarily fiction, a textbook or two, and, for me, the dreaded non-fiction literature. So on that steamy August day when I searched my book bag for what the syllabus mandates us to read--Manguel 1-123--I was markedly disheartened to pull out the book A History of Reading. After several attempts at forcing myself to open the book, I actually began to like and understand the notion that there is a researched, chronological understanding of how we read, why we read, and how reading (aloud or silently) has shaped our civilization and world.
At first, I have to admit the first several pages were somewhat of a drag. The overt way the author spoke of his addiction to reading was, at times, a little pretentious, but as he placed the historical facts that he learned while reading it gradually became somewhat entertaining. His historical data on how religions treated the idea of reading and writing, the Koran describes writing as "not one of the creations of God but one of His attributes, like His omnipresence or His compassion."(8) Judaeo-Christian tradition, however, believe "the key to understanding the universe lies in our ability to read"..."and master" the universe that is "made from numbers and letters."
And although he goes a far as to state that reading is his "rite of passage"(7) into manhood, his acknowledgment that "years later, I touched for the first time my lover's body did I realize that literature could sometimes fall short of the actual event" speaks to book's ability to share past lives and experiences, and instill them into the reader. This idea of a "rite of passage" for those who learn how to read never dawned on me until now. The ability to read does not only open someone up to the vast amounts of past knowledge, but it allows for independent thought from family, friends, and even teachers that can outweigh the time and place's zeitgeist. In Manguel's book, no more than a paragraph was fully written about this idea of the reader's "rite of passage," but that idea alone is enough to carry several chapters in any text.
One thing I struggled with in this book was unloading my own modern ideology. When learning that reading was performed oratorically more than silently, the notion had to grow on me. The change in culture and in social hierarchy over the years, when combined with our civilization now, is kind of a shell shock, but under this pretense the book did well showing the chronological practicality of certain advancements in reading and of certain declines.
Advancements in reading, such as the use of breaking down large sums of script for generals during war times (the Greeks), the advancements in historical preservation, retrospection, and education, and introduction of the "cumulative" sense of time that characterized literate societies versus the linear sense of time that characterized illiterate societies, all constitute a continual advancement in a societies historical thought process. And declines such as, the destruction of books, the lack of free thought about text taught in school, and the belief by early Christians that silent reading lead to "day dreaming."
From the beginning of reading and writing, up until now, the subtle practicality of reading was the belief that since we have a limited amount of time on this earth, we have to learn from the people before us. But although I would believe this is common knowledge today, the ability to see how our way of thinking came to be is rather insightful.
From all of the reading and from all of the history stated, one question still looms. Is reading and writing something we are innately made for?
The advances in reading and writing allows for more than enough evidence that there is some faculty of our mind programmed for this symbolic interpretative function, but as silent reading was not an innate ability, or not disclosed, in this book, as an innate ability, such dogmatic belief that we are supposed to read, at least for me, comes into question.
At first, I have to admit the first several pages were somewhat of a drag. The overt way the author spoke of his addiction to reading was, at times, a little pretentious, but as he placed the historical facts that he learned while reading it gradually became somewhat entertaining. His historical data on how religions treated the idea of reading and writing, the Koran describes writing as "not one of the creations of God but one of His attributes, like His omnipresence or His compassion."(8) Judaeo-Christian tradition, however, believe "the key to understanding the universe lies in our ability to read"..."and master" the universe that is "made from numbers and letters."
And although he goes a far as to state that reading is his "rite of passage"(7) into manhood, his acknowledgment that "years later, I touched for the first time my lover's body did I realize that literature could sometimes fall short of the actual event" speaks to book's ability to share past lives and experiences, and instill them into the reader. This idea of a "rite of passage" for those who learn how to read never dawned on me until now. The ability to read does not only open someone up to the vast amounts of past knowledge, but it allows for independent thought from family, friends, and even teachers that can outweigh the time and place's zeitgeist. In Manguel's book, no more than a paragraph was fully written about this idea of the reader's "rite of passage," but that idea alone is enough to carry several chapters in any text.
One thing I struggled with in this book was unloading my own modern ideology. When learning that reading was performed oratorically more than silently, the notion had to grow on me. The change in culture and in social hierarchy over the years, when combined with our civilization now, is kind of a shell shock, but under this pretense the book did well showing the chronological practicality of certain advancements in reading and of certain declines.
Advancements in reading, such as the use of breaking down large sums of script for generals during war times (the Greeks), the advancements in historical preservation, retrospection, and education, and introduction of the "cumulative" sense of time that characterized literate societies versus the linear sense of time that characterized illiterate societies, all constitute a continual advancement in a societies historical thought process. And declines such as, the destruction of books, the lack of free thought about text taught in school, and the belief by early Christians that silent reading lead to "day dreaming."
From the beginning of reading and writing, up until now, the subtle practicality of reading was the belief that since we have a limited amount of time on this earth, we have to learn from the people before us. But although I would believe this is common knowledge today, the ability to see how our way of thinking came to be is rather insightful.
From all of the reading and from all of the history stated, one question still looms. Is reading and writing something we are innately made for?
The advances in reading and writing allows for more than enough evidence that there is some faculty of our mind programmed for this symbolic interpretative function, but as silent reading was not an innate ability, or not disclosed, in this book, as an innate ability, such dogmatic belief that we are supposed to read, at least for me, comes into question.
