How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

How reading changed my life  by Anna Quindlen

Explain the following words/phrases form the context: Paragraph 1:  a series of scratches on a piece of paper –   a list of livestock on a clay tablet –   redundancy –    people bent almost double –   embroidering the ever changing tapestry of their past –   spinning a tale –   tail end –   audio books –  alleviating tedium of travel by car –   Paragraph 2:  immutable language –   arbitrary handful of characters –  transactional relationship –    to ameliorate the isolation of each of us –   evanescence of speech –  Paragraph 3: champion of books –   Paragraph 4: disdain –    rekindled –  clay tablet –    scroll –   codex –  hand lettered and illuminated –    dispatches –   a war of words –   set in type –   fomented –  Paragraph 5:   broadsides –  Paragraph 6: steep risers –    contraption –   travails –   transcending customs, scriptures, time, mores –   enthralls –  the acme –    intricate workings –   flip the page –    perpetuity --

What are the qualities of speech and writing according to the essay? Compare. Speech

Writing

Choose one of the following and write a short essay: Anna Quindlen writes in her essay: “All of reading is really only finding ways to name ourselves, and, perhaps to name the others around us so they will no longer seem like strangers.” How do you understand this quotation and do you agree with the author’s point of view? The essay ‘How reading changed my life’ is really about how it changed the history of  humankind. Explain the influence of reading on the history and the development of  human societies.