The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation on Reading

By Geoffrey O'Brien

Book Overview

This is a prose poem about reading - a playful, epigrammatic nocturne upon the dream-state one falls into when lost in a book, and the uncanny, trancelike pleasure of making silent marks on paper... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158243056X
• ISBN13: 9781582430560
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Length: 153 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Essays about being absorbed by the written word

The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation On Reading by Geoffrey O'Brien is a simply fascinating selection of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays about being absorbed by the written word, as well as the wonder and the pleasure of being transported by and through books to times, places, and thoughts heretofore unknowable to the solitary reader. An inspirational and welcome reflection on the pastime that marked the dawn of recorded human history down to the present day and into the forseeable future, The Browser's Ecstasy is enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone who has ever had a book transport them through journeys of the mind into lives, places, people, and events far from their own native habitat.

A Delightful Bookish Reverie to Banish Stalled Thinking

Books are a potential delight to all of our senses and many dimensions of our minds. It is entirely too simple and limiting to think of books as their physical embodiment of paper, ink and binding. Yet, if you are like me, you haven't exactly thought about them as potential magic carpets, strolling minstrels, and companions against the night. That's where you have stalled thinking. Mr. O'Brien's wonderful perception is about to take you outside the box (and the book) to consider what your real relationship is to these wonderful repositories of humanity.This is one of the most imaginative and fun books that I have ever read! Mr. O'Brien takes books and turns them into metaphorical extensions of ourselves and our lives, and then connects it all back together in a beautiful stream of stories. You'll feel like you've suddenly become part of some modern Divine Comedy as you move through this fascinating book. If we were in ancient Green times, we would think of this book as a philosophical treatment of what a book is and what bookness is, as well. Fortunately, we are in modern times, because the author can use vivid language and visions to entrance us . . . not unlike a series of tales out of the Arabian nights!I especially enjoyed the continuing theme of whether the books are with us or not, and our connection to them. You will never think about a book in the same way again after you read this work, and you'll be the better for your self-transformation.