San Antonio College Library

"Why do bookshops matter? How do they filter our ideas and literature? In this inventive and highly entertaining essay, Jorge Carrion takes his reader on a journey around the world, via its bookshops. His travels take him to Shakespeare & Co in Paris, Wells in Winchester, Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Librairie des Colonnes in Tangier, the Strand Book Store in New York and provoke encounters with thinkers, poets, dreamers, revolutionaries and...

Plan of reading to widen the horizons, and increase the satisfaction to be found in books.

The author of this enchanting, exuberant book has been called "America's most vocal and provocative bookman," as well as the "most literate, readable, and perhaps most controversial librarian." His unique gift for communicating his enthusiasm for books, music, and travel in these warm, lively essays opens new worlds to the reader. Powell's earlier books have been about the Book (the little package), book collecting and reading, and the Southwest....

Answering the question "is a book the same the second time around?" this collection of essays includes contributions from Sven Krkerts, Allegra Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Patricia Hampl, Phillip Lopate, and Luc Sante, among others.

The author shares personal essays on diverse topics ranging from literary pets and cursive writing to book inscriptions and the pleasures of science fiction conventions.

"In this major collection of his essays, Alberto Manguel, whom George Steiner has called 'the Casanova of reading, ' argues that the activity of reading, in its broadest sense, defines our species. 'We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everything, ' writes Manguel, 'landscape, the skies, the faces of others, the images and words that our species create.' Reading our own lives and those of others, reading the societies we live in and...

"Explores what people have read and why they have read it at different times and in different places in America and around the world ... Links key cultural changes and events to the reading material of the period ... Traces reading trends through an exploration of types of texts as well as specific examples of books, magazines, and political treatises that were influential and/or widely read ... Each chapter includes a timeline of events and an introduction...

"Thank You for Not Reading is a biting critique of book publishing: agents, subagents, and scouts, supermarket-like bookstores, Joan Collins, book fairs that have little to do with books, authors promoted because of sex appeal instead of merit, and editors trying to look like writers by having their photograph taken against a background of bookshelves. Nowadays, the best strategy for young authors wanting to publish is to become famous in some other...