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# Manguel
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/28367/
- Published: 2013-10-03T07:49:22.000Z
- Updated: 2013-10-03T07:49:22.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: Miscellaneous, #wpChunk

The Subtleties of Reading

I'm pretty sure this is something I've always known, but only at a semi-conscious level:

> W.H. Auden "suggested that the book one reads should somehow be at odds with the place in which it's read. . . \[N\]ot only do certain books demand a contrast between their contents and their surroundings; some books seem to demand particular positions for reading, postures of the reader's body that in turn require reading-places appropriate to those postures. . . There are books I read in armchairs, and there are books I read at desks; there are books I read in subways, on streetcars and on buses. . . . In the twelfth-century *Life of Saint Gregory*, the toilet is described as 'a retiring place where tablets can be read without interruption.'"

Alberto Manguel, *A History of Reading*, pp. 151-152.

Nassim Taleb makes a similar point about e-readers. I forget his exact wording, but he said something like, "One does not drink fine wine from a styrofoam cup and one does not read Gibbons' *Rise and Fall* on a Kindle." I tend to agree, though I cannot--like Manguel and Taleb--precisely pin down the reason.