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`HISTORY OF READING' ROOTED IN AUTHOR'S OWN PASSION FOR BOOKS.(Lifestyle)(Review)

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From: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, WA)
Date: 19961210
Author:

Thomas Carlyle declared that ``in books lies the soul of the whole past time,'' while Mencken complained about ``bibliobibuli,'' those compulsive readers who are ``constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whisky or religion.''

Descartes hailed the reading of good books as ``conversation with the finest men of past centuries,'' while Schopenhauer equated reading ``to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.'' As for Kafka, he warned that ``a book cannot take the place of the world.''

So much has been written about the pleasures and perils ...

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