Readers for Life
How Reading and Listening in Childhood Shapes Us
Sander L. Gilman, Heta PyrhönenA collection of essays that explores how reading shapes an individual’s life.
How does the act of reading shape an individual? In this stimulating book, fiction authors and literary scholars reflect on their memories of reading to explore that question, from their childhood and adolescent years into adulthood and beyond. Instead of focusing on reading as an act of escapism, or mere literacy, these writings celebrate reading as a lifelong, joyful experience that intertwines past and present. By revealing our diverse reading histories, the collection fosters awareness of the profound impact of reading on a person’s development and offers readers insights that will enrich their own literary experiences.
Introduction by Sander L. Gilman and Heta Pyrhönen, with essays by Natalya Bekhta, Peter Brooks, Philip Davis, Linda and Michael Hutcheon, Sander L. Gilman, Daniel Mendelsohn, Laura Otis, Laura Oulanne, Heta Pyrhönen, Michael Rosen, Salman Rushdie, Cristina Sandu, Pajtim Statovci and Maria Tatar.
A collection of essays that explores how reading shapes an individual’s life.
How does the act of reading shape an individual? In this stimulating book, fiction authors and literary scholars reflect on their memories of reading to explore that question, from their childhood and adolescent years into adulthood and beyond. Instead of focusing on reading as an act of escapism, or mere literacy, these writings celebrate reading as a lifelong, joyful experience that intertwines past and present. By revealing our diverse reading histories, the collection fosters awareness of the profound impact of reading on a person’s development and offers readers insights that will enrich their own literary experiences.
Introduction by Sander L. Gilman and Heta Pyrhönen, with essays by Natalya Bekhta, Peter Brooks, Philip Davis, Linda and Michael Hutcheon, Sander L. Gilman, Daniel Mendelsohn, Laura Otis, Laura Oulanne, Heta Pyrhönen, Michael Rosen, Salman Rushdie, Cristina Sandu, Pajtim Statovci and Maria Tatar.
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Readers for Life, edited by Sander L. Gilman and Heta Pyrhöhnen, is a superb and dazzling collection of unusual and insightful memoirs concerning the value of reading by notable writers such as Salman Rushdie, Peter Brooks, Cristina Sandu and others. At a time when illiteracy is mounting throughout the world, this book urgently recalls how reading still opens the minds of young people to deal with the conflicts they face, not with guns but with imagination. What a joy to read how these writers have profited from reading!
'Jack Zipes, author of Speaking Out
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Readers for Life will prompt lifelong readers to cast their minds back to their earliest immersion in storyworlds, to beloved books and the people who recommended them. From the spines of the volumes on the shelf, to vivid illustrations, to the reverberation of language, to the mental impressions and ideas shaping their perceptions of experience, the reading recalled by Gilman and Pyrhönen's contributors opens realms of possibility, invites adventures of perspective-taking, and encourages returns to both refreshing and challenging books.
'Suzanne Keen, author of Empathy and Reading
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This extraordinary book celebrates the rich array of experiences that reading offers, and the variety of responses that it nourishes. And it does so with individual gifts of grace in the form of essays from fourteen diverse and dedicated readers who bring together the wonders of the world and the worries of life. It shows how reading helps keep them in balance, and provides us with sometimes life-saving company when we are alone. And if we are ignorant, a book cannot laugh at us.
'J. Edward Chamberlin, author of Storylines: How Words Shape Our World
Sander L. Gilman (Anthology Editor)
Sander L. Gilman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Stand Up Straight! A History of Posture (Reaktion, 2018).
Heta Pyrhönen (Anthology Editor)
Heta Pyrhönen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki. She is the author or editor of many books including Reading Today (2018).
