History of Reading - p.3-123

I definitely found that this text became more and more interesting to me as I dove deeper into the actual material.

Honestly, the most interesting chapter to me was the one that explained the use of picture reading through the example of the Biblia Pauperum that helped either assist poor people in understanding the Bible or helped poor preachers give sermons from the Bible. I suppose I had just never thought of how pictures and pictures alone could convey an entire story to someone who is illiterate, but when you think of modern world items that do this (like road signs), I suppose it makes more sense. I guess being a reader and having the ability to comprehend and understand the text of the English language is something that I've taken for granted for so long.

I am actually familiar with the Codex Seraphinianus from an online resource discovered during high school. When I first found it, I had no idea what it was or what it was about; I honestly just thought all the images were intriguing. Having now read about how it was more of a rare exception to the concept of picture reading, I now understand that for most, it isn't important for the reader of this particular book to know just what exactly it is or what it is about. I think that's sort of a nice concept. It deletes the idea that one absolutely must be able to grasp the main themes and purpose of a text and forces the reader just enjoy having an imagination to a degree.

When reading about the chapter that described how Cuban cigar wrappers were read to by a "lector", an interesting bit of trivia was revealed. A man named Carlos Manuel de Cespedes was brought up in how he started the revolution against Spain to only be killed four years after becoming the first president of Cuba. It must be noted that according to history, de Cespedes had children prior to his death. One of them was a daughter named Gloria who grew up to marry a playwright and silent film actor (and formerly a physician) named Charles A. de Lima, who is partly my namesake. Their child was my grandfather, Edward Charles A. de Lima. It was very interesting to see my great, great grandfather brought up in the A History of Reading. Certainly not something I saw coming.

I was also excited to read about one of my favorite authors, Franz Kafka. I particularly took to his philosophy of how books "cannot take the place of the world", but instead "a man can't... master his own experience through the medium of another personality. [This] is how the world is in relation to books. One tries to imprison life in a book, like a songbird in a cage, but it's not good." (Manguel, A History of Reading. P. 91)

This concept of how individuals can sometimes take other people's experiences and harness them to learn from and create their own deductions without ever having experienced certain situations first hand is evidently a double edged sword. It can create a better understanding of the world so that when an individual does indeed find themselves in a particular situation, they may very well be capable of finding their way out due to a previous reading. However, they make end up lacking the knowledge of why they're doing what they are. It's an interesting argument of which is more valuable: the experience or the simple knowledge.

Introduction

Hey there.

My name is Devin de Lima. I am a transfer student at Kennesaw State University, coming from a smaller private college in Madison, NJ named Fairleigh-Dickinson University. Never heard of it? That's fine. No one has.

I was, however, raised in Woodstock, GA, a few miles north of Kennesaw, so I grew up in this area and went to high school not too far from my current university. I simply moved to New Jersey in hopes of change, and while that is indeed what I got, it didn't necessarily fit my needs anymore after three semesters. This is my first semester at Kennesaw, and I just got done with a semester off, which involved a lot of working and get my feet on solid ground.

I may have been raised in Woodstock, but I was not born there. I was born in Greenwood Lake, NY (never heard of that either? I don't blame you.), where I lived until I was seven before venturing down south due to my father getting a promotion and a transfer. In the end, everything worked out.

I look forward to diving into these readings for the class, and I suppose it's comforting to know that I will not be alone in trying to understand what it is that could be the most important details in these works. Until next time!