How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen
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(Paperback)
- Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
- Pub. Date: August 1998
- ISBN-13: 9780345422781
- Sales Rank: 39,277
- 84pp
- Series: Library of Contemporary Thought
- Edition Number: 1
Synopsis
THE LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT is a groundbreaking series where America's finest writers and most brilliant minds tackle today's most provocative, fascinating, and relevant issues. Striking and daring, creative and important, these original voices on matters political, social, economic, and cultural, will enlighten, comfort, entertain, enrage, and ignite healthy debate across the country.
Publishers Weekly
In this pithy celebration of the power and joys of reading, Quindlen emphasizes that books are not simply a means of imparting knowledge, but also a way to strengthen emotional connectedness, to lessen isolation, to explore alternate realities and to challenge the established order. To these ends much of the book forms a plea for intellectual freedom as well as a personal paean to reading. Quindlen (One True Thing) recalls her own early love affair with reading; writes with unabashed fervor of books that shaped her psychosexual maturation (John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga, Mary McCarthy's The Group); and discusses the books that made her a liberal committed to fighting social injustice (Dickens, the Bible). She compares reading books to intimate friendship--both activities enable us to deconstruct the underpinnings of interpersonal problems and relationships. Her analysis of the limitations of the computer screen is another rebuttal of those who predict the imminent demise of the book. In order to further inspire potential readers, she includes her own admittedly "arbitrary and capricious" reading lists -- "The 10 books I would save in a fire," "10 modern novels that made me proud to be a writer," "10 books that will help a teenager feel more human" and various other categories. But most of all, like the columns she used to write for the New York Times, this essay is tart, smart, full of quirky insights, lapidary and a pleasure to read.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Whether in her columns or in bestselling novels such as One True Thing and Black and Blue, Pulitzer-winning writer Anna Quindlen encourages readers to see the embraceable in life, and to look critically at both the rules we pick up from society and the rules we have made for ourselves.
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
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How Reading Changed My Lifeby Anonymous
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January 11, 2005: Great book. This was a short, but fun book to read. I would recommend it to anyone that has an interest in reading, or books. The book was full of interesting facts, and information about reading and the current trend. It?s also help a self-proclaimed ?book-addict? feel normal, because this books showed me that there are plenty of people that share a similar love for books that I have. I would give this book a five out of five, and would read it again.
How Reading Changed My Lifeby Anonymous
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July 23, 2003: I don't read classics as Anna talks about in this book. However, all you need is to be a reader to enjoy her views on books. I loved how she talked about books read on-line and actually holding a book when you read. There's no comparison to holding and feeling a book in your hands. How wonderful to pick up and thumb through a book. Books are here to stay or at least I hope they are. I also enjoyed the talk of banned books and views on the subject...Wow, how funny was that! I think this is a must read for readers. I was given this book at a bookcrossing meetup and can't say enough about it! It's amazing that this book found me since this is nothing I would normally read!
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