Recently, I came across Alberto Manguel in a second-hand book sale (A Reading Diary). Reading the first chapter sent me looking for more books by him in the libraries around me. I then found one of his more recent books, Packing My Library (An Elegy and Ten Digressions).
'A Reading Diary' has a chapter devoted to a month, where he revisits an old favorite. It begins in June. The first one he picks up to reread is The Invention of Morel (by Adolfo Bioy Casares). Before getting on to the next month in the reading diary, I wished to savour what he savours.
The Invention of Morel is available at the Internet Archive (here). It is a novella, or a long short story of 90 pages. It is science fiction exploring the questions of immortality:
"I believe we lose immortality because we have not conquered our opposition to death; we keep insisting on the primary, rudimentary idea: that the whole body should be kept alive. We should seek to preserve only the part that has to do with consciousness."
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Manguel's A Reading Diary is written near about the year 2000 (I think). Incidentally, he has just moved to his fifteenth-century house in France (a year or so ago) and in a way, is unpacking his large library, keeping books on shelves, after years of those books being in storage. He talks about books he looks at and all the interesting digressions they open up. His passages are like a poet's, with high reference, and some really beautiful tangents.
This other book (Packing My Library), is written around 2015, when due to certain reasons he must leave France and is packing the library.
Reading while alternating between these books, there is an awareness of the transience of the library which the author of 'a reading diary' is yet unaware of. How life, any life, shapes up. The occassions are bittersweet, but the digressions always lovely. I have a new long list of books to look up next and poems that I have opened up to read.
(Later- I enjoy his Reading Diary much more than Packing my Library. Packing my Library seems more bitter, notes of despair, anguish on losing his library. Reading Diary is much more nuanced, hopeful, a world opening up with really beautiful tangents.. I abandoned the Packing book at some point midway.)
His personal library has thirty-five thousand books (!). Although he has written quite a few books, he refers to himself mainly as a reader.
Keen to read more from him, yet also keen to take the chapters in the books slowly, I looked up more from him, and found some writing by him online here: his page.