A surprising, ambitious memoir that raises important questions about what it is that we are doing when we read. Through a series of literary adventures Tompkins shares a journey to new self-knowledge. Her story will engage all book lovers for whom reading is a lifeline. - Nancy K. Miller, the Graduate Center, CUNY, author of Breathless: An American Girl in Paris A woman lies in bed, reading. She isn't well, and some days reading is all she can do. As she reads she comes to understand a lot about herself-her upbringing, her fears and her envy, her privileges, her life's steps and missteps. She is not reading for culture or academic privilege. She is reading to save her life. I loved reading with Tompkins as she lingers over books by Naipaul, Theroux, Dickinson, and Patchett and lets their stories open windows of all kinds. Every book group in the country should be reading Reading through the Night, for the conversations it will provoke, for the reading it will inspire, and for its captivating wisdom and grace. -Alice Kaplan, author of Looking for "The Stranger": Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic Reading through the Night is a vital manifesto on the importance of reading. It is not simply a reminder that literature can enrich us; it is a statement about the ability to live a rich and fulfilling life of the mind even when the body betrays us. Jane Tompkins guides us through what might have been a devastating loss-a disease that deprives her of her basic physical abilities-but instead becomes a new way of experiencing the world, and understanding her personal experience in the world, through a closer and more attentive relationship with words on the page. I have a profoundly altered appreciation for what literature offers us after reading this memoir. -Alden Jones, author of The Blind Masseuse: A Traveler's Memoir from Costa Rica to Cambodia [Tompkins'] book has something of the charge of a detective story, as she moves from book to book in search of herself and her past [...] She is a direct and generous narrator. -TLS, April 2019 Biografía del autor Jane Tompkins is a teacher and scholar known for her work on popular women's novels of the American nineteenth century. Her book on Western novels and films, West of Everything, won a prize from the American Popular Culture Association, and her memoir of teaching and learning, A Life in School, received an award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She has lectured and given workshops all over the United States and now lives in New York City, the Catskill Mountains, and South Florida.