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Packing My Library

An Elegy and Ten Digressions

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France's Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000-volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading. In this poignant and personal reevaluation of his life as a reader, the author illuminates the highly personal art of reading and affirms the vital role of public libraries.

Manguel's musings range widely, from delightful reflections on the idiosyncrasies of book lovers to deeper analyses of historic and catastrophic book events, including the burning of ancient Alexandria's library and contemporary library lootings at the hands of ISIS. With insight and passion, the author underscores the universal centrality of books and their unique importance to a democratic, civilized, and engaged society.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Argentine-Canadian journalist Alberto Manguel has always lived a peripatetic and literary-saturated life which, of course, has required considerable attention given to shifting his personal book collection from home to home and country to country. His story about the time that library went astray in the hauling is studded with digressions into his affection for public libraries, the oddities in his personal collection, and his delight in discovering various authors from childhood on, among others. Regrettably, James Cameron Stewart's narration enervates both text and listener. His upper-crust British accent and lugubrious pacing intrude upon the content and force the listener into a moodiness that pervades every passage. The transformation of a companionable read for bibliophiles into a plodding listen points up the need to ensure that a narrator must fit the author's temperament for a successful audiobook. F.M.R.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

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  • English

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