How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER ? Anna Quindlen presents a swift and compelling paean to the joys of books (Booklist). Like the columns she used to write for the New York Times, [How Reading Changed My Life] is tart, smart, full of quirky insights, lapidary, and a pleasure to read.--Publishers Weekly Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. . . . Yet of all the many things in which we recognize universal comfort--God, sex, food, family, friends--reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least publicly, although it was really all I thought of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in a chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room. . . . I read because I loved it more than any activity on earth.--from How Reading Changed My Life Editorial Reviews The Barnes & Noble Review Since she was a child, Anna Quindlen has been discovering the world and herself through reading: 'Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion.' From a lesser writer, such a tribute might be hyperbolic, but Quindlen has given as good as she's got. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for her New York Times column 'Public and Private,' Quindlen's three novels have been bestsellers, and her collection of 'Life in the 30's' columns, Living Out Loud, gave her a reputation as a voice for her generation, for her gender, and for thinking people everywhere. In the short, entertaining book How Reading Changed My Life - part of Ballantine's Library of Contemporary Thought series - Quindlen uses her sharp observations and gentle humor to describe her inner life as a reader, a life that other confirmed bibliophiles will recognize with delight and not a few rueful smiles. Quindlen tells of her game attempts to be 'a normal child, who lived, raucous, in the world,' playing outdoors with the other children in the creek or laying pennies on the trolley track: 'But at base it was never any good. There was always a part of me, the best part of me, back at home, within some book, laid flat on the table to mark my place, its imaginary people waiting for me to return and bring them back to life.' In describing her childhood, adolescence, and adult years, Quindlen marks the passages of time with the self-awareness she gained reading different novels, from A Wrinkle in Time to Middlemarch For those of us who, like Quindlen,couldgive up almost anything before we gave up reading, her book will feel like a party...to which the host has invited some of our oldest friends. -Derek Baker - 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. - Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly Readers who miss best-selling novelist Quindlen's newspaper column will welcome the return of her engaging voice in this latest addition to Ballantine's Library of Contemporary Thought, a series of short, inexpensive trade paperback originals. Never stodgy or academic, Quindlen ties her own experience to reading habits in general and the ways they have changed over the last 100 years, including the recent influence of Oprah. She concludes with a series of arbitrary and capricious reading lists that could give librarians ideas: 10 Books That Will Help a Teenager Feel More Human, 10 Mystery Novels I'd Most Like To Find in a Summer Rental, 10 Modern Novels That Made Me Proud To Be a Writer, etc. This little book for book lovers, an excellent choice for reading groups, is recommended for all libraries.--Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., Lafayette, CO - Library Journal
Publication Details

Title: How Reading Changed My Life

Author(s):

  • Anna Quindlen

Illustrator:

Binding: Paperback

Published by: Random House Publishing Group: , 2000

Edition:

ISBN: 9780345422781 | 0345422783

96 pages. 5.47(w) x 8.22(h) x 0.25(d)

  • ENG- English
Book Condition: Very Good
3311t

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What does the Book Condition Very Good mean? Good? Fair?
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Foxing - Wikipedia
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Age tanning, or browning, occurs over time on the pages of books. This process can show up on just the edges of pages, when this occurs it is sometimes referred to as "edge tanning." This kind of deterioration is commonly seen in books printed before the advent of acid-free paper in the 1980s.
r/BookCollecting - Is this mold or normal aging for a well used book?
 
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  • Trade Name: Book Express Ltd
  • Phone Number: (+64) 22 852 6879
  • Email: sales@bookexpress.co.nz
  • Address: 35 Nathan Terrace, Shannon, 4821, New Zealand.
  • GST Number: 103320957 - We are registered for GST in New Zealand
  • NZBN: 9429031911290

       

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