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The Art of Reading

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A beautiful celebratory tribute to the powers of one of our most undervalued skills — an ideal gift for the avid reader.

'What you are doing right now is, cosmically speaking, against the odds.'

As young children, we are taught to read, but soon go on to forget just how miraculous a process it is, this turning of scratches and dots into understanding, unease and inspiration. Perhaps we need to stop and remember, stop and learn again how to read better.

Damon Young shows us how to do exactly this, walking alongside some of the greatest readers who light a path for us — Borges, Plato, Woolf. Young reads passionately, selectively, surprisingly — from superhero noir to speculative realism, from Heidegger to Heinlein — and shows his reader how cultivating their inner critic can expand their own lives as well as the lives of those on the pages of the books they love.

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    • Books+Publishing

      February 24, 2016
      What’s the difference between a writer and a reader? In an ideal world, you would be both. After all, they say everyone has a story to tell. Damon Young’s story is about his lifelong love affair with books and the rich inner worlds created by reading. Following his previous books How to Think about Exercise and Philosophy in the Garden, this is perhaps his most idiosyncratic work to date as reading is, of course, innately personal. From the blunt aphorisms of Aesop’s Fables to the Gotham mythos of Batman, he explores the effect that books have had on him both as a bookish child and a scholarly adult. Each chapter is devoted to a different literary virtue—patience, curiosity, courage, pride, temperance and justice. Some skip along more easily than others; pride, for example, gets a little bogged down in academic philosophising with some of the explorations taking a leaden tone. Overall though, it’s an excellent argument for why reading is desirable for its own sake. Not every book is life-changing, but it does offer an experience away from the everyday. Young is interested in this portal to perception, and in the indispensability of reading in developing imaginative independence. Hilary Simmons is a former assistant editor at Books+Publishing and a freelance writer, copywriter and editor

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  • OverDrive Read
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Languages

  • English

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