A Book is as UNIQUE as the person reading it.

    To start off, everything that I read hit me like a freight train. At first I found that I was just doing an assigned reading, but soon found that I was realizing or finding things that I had noticed (in some cases that is). Alberto Manguel was able to open my point of view, in the area of books and such, to where I was not just looking at a page covered in letters, sentences, paragraphs and many cases of punctuation. I was finding that books are one of a kind to our own minds. If we enjoy reading, then we read. If we enjoy writing, then we write. In this case it showed me that many writers were also readers and vice versa.
  
    The first thing that struck me was the fact that we do not read just a book. What we read is "a certain edition, a specific copy, recognized by the roughness or smoothness of its paper, by its scent, by a slight tear on page 72 and a coffee ring on the right-hand corner of the back cover." (Manguel, 15) The book is specific to each single person, whether we notice or not. If you check out a book from a library, and go back to check out that book again you will look for the exact one that you had before. Another book is not the same, it doesn't feel the same, it weighs different. Even though it is the same text, it is not the same. To feel comfortable, I have actually waited for the exact one I had before to be returned.

    Maybe it is the way I make reading that book, or any book in that case, comfortable and unique. When I read I try to keep myself from falling into a brain-dead state or reading myself to sleep. So I try and set up ways to keep this from happening. I set up my office chair and foot-stool and relax and read, set up my bed table and sit against the wall, or if I know that I will be there reading for a while I might pile in on the couch in the music room. In all these cases, I am alone and away, tucked into a room where I wont be interrupted, or sitting somewhere where it is quiet enough for me to sit and think and process what I am reading. Apparently, I am not alone in this reasoning. "Emerson believed that reading a book was a private and solitary business." (53) Even Edith Wharton was known for making her bed into an area where she could read, write, and sometimes ate. (160) Not only these but there are cases like the Greek kline (154), the Roman bed for reading and writing (154), and even the monk reading in his cell. (155-156) All of these spreading over centuries or decades, but showing reading as I do it now, in my own home.

    One thing that surprised me was about reading silently. In some cases it was looked down upon, but in others, or in later years it was built upon. I do understand that is would be looked down upon in certain cases, since "reading out loud is not a private act, [so] the choice of reading material should be socially acceptable to both the reader and the audience."(122) I for one, would not be able to stand it if everyone read out loud today. I have enough issues with distractions while i am reading now, and that it is in the quietest environment i can achieve.

    The favorite part that I read was something that stayed with me after I finished, and I had to go back and read it again. I, myself, have never been to a huge library. The only ones I have been to were at the schools I've been at, or the one at the other University, but I have always wanted to go to one of the big world known libraries. This getting farther from what I am wanting to put, I will come back. The last paragraph on page 199, struck me in a way that I did not expect. I pictured this library of books, rooms, shelves, and computer catalouges just as it was depicting. When I reached the last part of the paragraph I wasn't sure what to think. I had to go back and read it a couple of times to drive into my comprehension what I was thinking. It wasn't that "the reader" has to "rescue the book from the category where it was condemned," but the fact that every time I go to the library I know exactly what I am searching for (if not exactly I have an idea). I would be doing research for something, but the idea of rescuing seemed odd to me. In my mind "rescue" goes hand in hand with a dangerous situation or something that is lost. Here It seemed to mean that it didn't belong where it had been placed, but it could also mean to rescue the books that we passed looking for a certain book.