How Reading Changed My Life
by Anna Quindlen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anna QuindlenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-08-25
ISBN: 0345422783
Number of pages: 96
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780345422781
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of How Reading Changed My Life
Book Review: Otherwise enjoyable, marred by hypocritical left wing slant
Summary: 2 Stars
Could have been very enjoyable, but marred by hypocrisy. In one breath the author is excoriating the elites of literary-criticism for trying to dictate what tastes readers should or shouldn't pursue when in the prior paragraph she had herself criticized businessmen for reading the seven habits of highly effective people, rather than a text she would find more worthy, like Moby Dick. (The Seven Habits is likely suspect to Ms. Quindlen because its written by a religious white male, and read by businessmen -read: greedy caucasian republicans). Her discussion of censorship likewise ignores the dangers posed by the current political correctness movement on college campuses(of which she has only praise), in favor of taking to task right wing parents groups who are concerned about the content of literature being assigned to their youngsters. Then she blithely suggests that the political speeches in Ayn Rand's novels, with which she obviously disagrees, should have been omitted by a good editor. (Free speech for me but not for thee?) There's also a curious sense of anti-maleness to the book. No suggestions for young male readers are provided, only for young girls. And it is strongly hinted that only the female gender truly understands the joy of reading. Maybe the author got this idea because she consulted virtually only with women in writing the book, as shown in her acknowledgements, or maybe her politics are generally based in some sort of hostility to men. Despite all these problems, the stuff about the misunderstood joys of being a young reader, and the typical reaction of one's peers, was wonderful. Too bad the author thinks only young girls, and not any young men,have ever experienced this. She's wrong. I know. But as of yet there aren't any entries in the genre about a young man's experiences with "Lord of the Rings" and "Where the Red Fern Grows" etc., so this will have to do.
Summary of How Reading Changed My Life
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.A recurring theme throughout Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life is the comforting premise that readers are never alone. "There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books," she writes, "a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently did, a universe in which I might be a newcomer but never really a stranger. My real, true world." Later, she quotes editor Hazel Rochman: "Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but, most important, it finds homes for us everywhere." Indeed, Quindlen's essays are full of the names of "friends," real or fictional--Anne of Green Gables and Heidi; Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen, to name just a few--who have comforted, inspired, educated, and delighted her throughout her life. In four short essays Quindlen shares her thoughts on the act of reading itself ("It is like the rubbing of two sticks together to make a fire, the act of reading, an improbable pedestrian task that leads to heat and light"); analyzes the difference between how men and women read ("there are very few books in which male characters, much less boys, are portrayed as devoted readers"); and cheerfully defends middlebrow literature:
Most of those so-called middlebrow readers would have readily admitted that the Iliad set a standard that could not be matched by What Makes Sammy Run? or Exodus. But any reader with common sense would also understand intuitively, immediately, that such comparisons are false, that the uses of reading are vast and variegated and that some of them are not addressed by Homer.The Canon, censorship, and the future of publishing, not to mention that of reading itself, are all subjects Quindlen addresses with intelligence and optimism in a book that may not change your life, but will no doubt remind you of other books that did. --Alix Wilber
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