First, thanks for picking this first subject. I've got a few thoughts to share, and a couple of questions to get the discussion going.

I'm curious to hear what people thought of the documentary, Empire of the Word (all episodes are available on the TVO website). What impressed me, for instance, is how broadly it covered the historical roots of reading and writing. I learned some things (I didn't know that the first writers in the world were accountants!) and was moved by others (the traumatic scene of the curators in the looted museum in Baghdad, the biblioburro), as discussed in class. (I also liked the choice of music).

So I'll start with two thoughts and a bunch of related questions, one on the history side and one on the magic.

1) History: The architect of the new library in Alexandria, Egypt, commented that "if writing is the beginning of history, libraries are the beginning of civilization." Are we losing libraries, and if so, is it the end of civilization? How often do you physically go to the library? How often did you go as a child? How important is it for society to have a public library system?

2) Magic: I think I actually remember the moment I figured out that I knew how to read. I must have been 5 or so.. I was watching something on TV (ironic, but true). At the end of whatever it was (that I do not remember!), a quill pen scrawled The End across the dark screen. I had seen this animated ending many times, but hadn't registered that the image was a pen writing words, and now I understood them, and this must mean I could read. It was a moment.

Do you remember first learning to read?

After I graduated from university, my first job was in the acquisitions library of the Toronto Board of Education. This was a huge library of primarily children's books, and one of my jobs was to place new pockets at the back of books for the lending cards (this was the year 1802, of course). For weeks, I sat amidst the stacks doing this mechanical job. Every so often, I would pick up a book and have a visceral sense of familiarity. These were books I had read as a young child but had totally forgotten about. Each book brought back strong floods of memory. One was Harold and the Purple Crayon, another was a book of black and white photos of Japanese girls going through their day (and I remembered having been fascinated by their clothing, food, beds, bath routines as a child). Three Little Horses Have a Holiday - this long, tall, thin, book of the horses going on an adventure in a hot-air balloon. On it went.
I realized for the first time what a strong relationship we form with the books we read and enjoy, and particularly when we are children. The bonding isn't just an intellectual thing; it's very tactile, you remember how the books felt and smelled and where you read them.

So I'm curious: are there books from your childhood that you recall in this way? That you really bonded with strongly and read over and over again?

There is some magic in that thing that happens when we read, especially as children.

Kristen, I wonder if the book you remember is Puffin's Homecoming? I found that title doing a quick Google search.
You remind me of another book that had a deep effect on me as a child: The Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell, about a young girl who gets left behind when her tribe is forced to leave their island (I'm hazy on why but had to do with white people), and survives alone for 18 years. Based on a true story. She really bonds with the animals of the island.

I agree, Kyra, that libraries should be public and free to everyone. A later episode of the documentary shows how libraries are changing (eg. archiving digital material like Facebook, website pages, email) with technology.

And Krystal is right, I think, that there will always be a need for a place to house historical documents. Put this on your life's "to do" list: a visit to the British Library in London, where you can view such things as Jane Austen's original manuscript for Emma, and the napkin on which the Beatles scrawled the lyrics to one of their songs. Illuminated manuscripts, an original Gutenburg Bible, etc.

On a different element of the doc: A. J. Jacobs decided to take the bible literally for a year. What did you think he accomplished by this (besides getting to stone a magazine image of Charlie Sheen?). For one thing, he gets at the idea of literalism v. metaphor and interpretation, which of course is central to all the religious controversies and outright wars of many thousands of years.

I know about the Munsch book - you wouldn't believe the number of people who have given it to me for my birthday - I think I have at least six copies!

Carly brings up a good point about the difference between learning your native language as a child and trying to learn one as an adult. Bringing that point back to the documentary, it was the desire to give access to the Bible that fueled the revolution to have it translated into "the vernacular," that is, whatever common language people spoke and eventually, read. Language, who can speak or read it, has always been intertwined with politics and power (which is why it's seen as threatening and leads to traumatic occurrences like book burnings, library looting, etc.)

It's certainly true about films, Josh, and I'd say many HBO-quality television too. Of course, you need writers to fuel these art forms (and many are based on novels).

The "biblioburro" was certainly among my favorite revelations of the documentary as well.

The serious side of Jacobs' journey was of course to show, through humour, how absurd and oppressive literalism can be. How sad if we forgot about metaphor and poetry, or stamped out freedom of interpretation. Yet many on this planet seek to do so.

Yes, it's true about our ability to take literacy for granted - though as the second episode illustrated, many people in Canada cannot in fact read well enough to fully participate in society. That's really so sad, disturbing even.

A quick note: Alberto Manguel is a writer and book lover, but not a bookstore owner. That is his library in France where he is depicted poring over his many tomes. He wrote a book a few years ago entitled The History of Reading, and I believe the documentary arose from that. He's an interesting person - I have met him as he was the head of the literary journalism program at the Banff Centre for some years, and also lived in Toronto. If you Google him, you'll see he's written an enormous amount in his life, from novels to reviews and non fiction too.

I'm interested in something that came up in earlier comments about how reading is an expression of the individual - I loved how the documentary explored how that notion of freedom to read and interpret actually represented a real revolution in human history - at one time, we did not have that freedom, the texts were interpreted in one way only, and anyone who deviated was a threat. Yet people did it anyway - that's why a monk's seemingly simple poem about a white cat, in the margins of a manuscript, signals a profound turning point. That someone dared to scribble their own thoughts - a really big deal back then!