Cuốn mới ra lò của AM, trong có nhiều bài đã xb thành sách, nay in chung thành tập.
Alberto Manguel cũng dân Canada. GCC biết ông ngay những ngày đầu qua xứ lạnh, gặp NTV và anh giới thiệu Chuyện Đọc, "A History of Reading", thật tuyệt đã từng được giải Medicis của Tây.
Một tay mọt sách. Cách đọc của ông, [có thể ảnh hưởng tới GCC], là đọc quanh, đọc xoáy về Lò Thiêu.
Đã từng được Borges xoa đầu, cho làm kẻ đọc sách cho ông, khi ông bị mù.

TV giới thiệu bài viết ngắn của ông, trong cuốn trên

Ghi chú về định nghĩa về 1 vị độc giả lý tưởng

"Let's hear it," said Humpty Dumpty. "I can explain all the poems that ever were invented - and a good many that haven't been invented just yet."
Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 6

Ta có thể giải thích tất cả những bài thơ đã từng được viết ra - và khá nhiều bài chưa được viết.
GCC mà chẳng đã từng bốc phét, đọc nửa cuốn sách, coi nửa cuốn phim, là đã đoán ra phần còn lại?

THE IDEAL READER IS THE writer just before the words come together on the page.
The ideal reader exists in the moment that precedes the moment of creation.
Ideal readers do not reconstruct a story: they re-create it. Ideal readers do not follow a story: they partake of it.
A famous children's book program on the BBC always started with the host asking, ''Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin." The ideal reader is also the ideal sitter.
Depictions of Saint Jerome show him poised over his translation of the Bible, listening to the word of God. The ideal reader must learn how to listen.

Độc giả lý tưởng là nhà văn đúng ngay trước khi những con chữ bò ra tấp nập, rộn ràng, trên trang giấy.
Độc giả lý tưởng hiện hữu vào khoảnh khắc liền trước khoảnh khắc sáng tạo.
Những độc giả lý tưởng không tái xây dựng một câu chuyện: Họ tái-sáng tạo nó. Những độc giả lý tưởng không theo dõi một câu chuyện: Họ tham dự vô nó.
Một chương trình cho trẻ em của đài BBC luôn bắt đầu bằng câu của người chủ chương trình: “Các em ngồi thoải mái chưa?  Nếu rồi thì chúng ta bắt đầu”. Độc giả lý tưởng thì cũng y chang người ngồi lý tưởng.
Những nét mô tả Saint Jreome cho thấy người ở trong một tư thế đĩnh đạc trong khi diễn dịch lời của Chúa. Độc giả lý tưởng phải học, làm thế nào lắng nghe.

Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader

"Let's hear it," said Humpty Dumpty. "I can explain all the poems that ever were invented - and a good many that haven't been invented just yet."

Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 6

THE IDEAL READER IS THE writer just before the words come together on the page.
   The ideal reader exists in the moment that precedes the moment of creation.
   Ideal readers do not reconstruct a story: they re-create it.
    Ideal readers do not follow a story: they partake of it.
    A famous children's book program on the BBC always started with the host asking, ''Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin." The ideal
reader is also the ideal sitter.
    Depictions of Saint Jerome show him poised over his translation of the Bible, listening to the word of God. The ideal reader must learn how to listen.
   The ideal reader is the translator, able to dissect the text, peel back the skin, slice down to the marrow, follow each artery and each vein, and then set on its feet a whole new sentient being. The ideal reader is not a taxidermist.
   For the ideal reader all devices are familiar.
   For the ideal reader all jokes are new.
   "One must be an inventor to read well." Ralph Waldo Emerson.
   The ideal reader has an unlimited capacity for oblivion and can dismiss from memory the knowledge that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are one and the same person, that Julien Sorel will have his head cut off, that the name of the murderer of Roger Ackroyd is So-and-so.
   The ideal reader has no interest in the writings of Bret Easton Ellis. The ideal reader knows what the writer only intuits.
   The ideal reader subverts the text. The ideal reader does not take the writer's word for granted. 
   The ideal reader is a cumulative reader: every reading of a book adds a new layer of memory to the narrative.
   Every ideal reader is an associative reader and reads as if all books were the work of one ageless and prolific author.
   Ideal readers cannot put their knowledge into words.
   Upon closing the book, ideal readers feel that, had they not read it, the world would be poorer.
   The ideal reader has a wicked sense of humor. Ideal readers never count their books.
   The ideal reader is both generous and greedy.
   The ideal reader reads all literature as if it were anonymous. The ideal reader enjoys using a dictionary.
   The ideal reader judges a book by its cover.
   Reading a book from centuries ago, the ideal reader feels immortal. Paolo and Francesca were not ideal readers since they confess to Dante  that after their first kiss they read no more. Ideal readers would have kissed and then read on. One love does not exclude the other.
   Ideal readers do not know they are ideal readers until they have reached the end of the book
   The ideal reader shares the ethics of Don Quixote, the longing of Madame Bovary, the lust of the Wife of Bath, the adventurous spirit of Ulysses, the mettle of Holden Caulfield, at least for the space of the story.
    The ideal reader treads the beaten path. "A good reader, major reader, an active and creative reader is a re-reader." Vladimir Nabokov.
     The ideal reader is polytheistic.
    The ideal reader holds, for a book, the promise of resurrection. Robinson Crusoe is not an ideal reader. He reads the Bible to find answers.
    An ideal reader reads to find questions.
     Every book, good or bad, has its ideal reader.
    For the ideal reader, every book reads, to a certain degree, as an autobiography.
   The ideal reader has no precise nationality.
Sometimes a writer must wait several centuries to find the ideal reader. It took Blake ISO years to find Northrop Frye.
Stendhal's ideal reader: "I write for barely a hundred readers, for unhappy, amiable, charming beings, never moral or hypocritical, whom I would like to please; I know barely one or two."
The ideal reader has known unhappiness.
Ideal readers change with age. The fourteen-year-old ideal reader of Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems is no longer its ideal reader at thirty. Experience tarnishes certain readings.
Pinochet, who banned Don Quixote because he thought it advocated civil disobedience, was that book's ideal reader.
The ideal reader never exhausts the book's geography.
The ideal reader must be willing, not only to suspend disbelief, but to embrace a new faith.
The ideal reader never thinks, "If only ... " Writing on the margins is a sign of the ideal reader. The ideal reader proselytizes.
The ideal reader is guiltlessly whimsical.
The ideal reader is capable of falling in love with one of the book's characters.
The ideal reader is not concerned with anachronism, documentary truth, historical accuracy, topographical exactness. The ideal reader is not an archaeologist.
The ideal reader is a ruthless enforcer of the rules and regulations that each book creates for itself.
"There are three kinds of readers: one, who enjoys without judging; a third, who judges without enjoying; another in the middle, who judges while enjoying and enjoys while judging. The last class truly reproduces a work of art anew; its members are not numerous." Goethe, in a letter to Johann Frieddrich Rochlitz.
The readers who committed suicide after reading Werther were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.
Ideal readers are seldom sentimental.
The ideal reader wishes both to get to the end of the book and to know that the book will never end.
The ideal reader is never impatient.
The ideal reader is not concerned with genres.
The ideal reader is (or appears to be) more intelligent than the writer; the ideal reader does not hold this against the writer.
There comes a time when every reader considers himself to be the ideal reader.
Good intentions are not enough to produce an ideal reader.
The marquis de Sade: "I only write for those capable of understanding me, and these will read me with no danger."
The marquis de Sade is wrong: the ideal reader is always in danger. The ideal reader is a novel's main character.
Paul Valery: ''A literary ideal: finally to know not to fill the page with anything except 'the reader.'''
The ideal reader is someone the writer would not mind spending an evening with, over a glass of wine.
An ideal reader should not be confused with a virtual reader. Writers are never their own ideal reader.
Literature depends, not on ideal readers, but merely on good enough readers.