Anyone who loves books will feel an immediate affection for A Reader On Reading (Yale Univ., $18). Alberto Manguel is a warm and graceful writer who considers himself first and foremost a reader. The sheer joy of holding, opening, contemplating, and recalling books comes through in everything he writes. No facet of literacy is too small or large for his attention; here are fascinating histories of the period, the page, and libraries, while the political pieces on repression and censorship make powerful arguments for the essential role freedom of reading plays in a society. Manguel’s appreciations of his favorite books, Alice in Wonderland and Don Quixote (he also loves detective novels), are erudite and insightful, yet are less literary criticism than heartfelt recommendations. As every reader does with what he loves, he has made these books his own, and his essays demonstrate how reading, as much as writing, is autobiography, even as the books reciprocate, the cumulative readings bringing out their true character and giving them richer tones.