false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg 1254406 2 From one of the most original writers now at work, an expansive, learned, and utterly charming reverie on what it means to be lost in a book <P>Louis Menand, writing in The New Yorker, called Geoffrey O'Brien's The Phantom Empire "a prose poem about the pleasures and distractions of movie-watching," "an ambitiously literary attempt to write about the [mystery of the] medium as though it were a dream the author had just awakened from." Now, in The Browser's Ecstasy, O'Brien has written a prose poem about reading, a playful, epigrammatic nocturne upon the dream-state one falls into when "lost in a book," upon the uncanny, trancelike pleasure of making silent marks on paper utter sounds inside one's head. <P>We call The Browser's Ecstasy a "Meditation on Reading," but like any truly original book-and especially the short book that goes both far and deep-it resists easy summary and classification. As Luc Sante once wrote, "The density of O'Brien's work makes word count irrelevant as an index of substance; he is seemingly capable of compressing entire encyclopedias into his parenthetical asides. I defy you to name any precedent for what he does. He's a school unto himself." 1108149 18 5 2000 The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation on Reading total:9|5:1|4:5|3:2|1:1| 9 32 31 0 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 0 0 false Tue Nov 17 11:40:53 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 17 11:41:02 -0800 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 0 0 false Wed Oct 28 09:34:51 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 28 09:34:51 -0700 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 0 0 false Sun Oct 18 03:18:31 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 18 03:18:31 -0700 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 0 0 false Mon Jun 01 14:48:01 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 01 14:48:08 -0700 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 3 0 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Wed May 20 08:25:33 -0700 2009 Wed May 20 08:25:40 -0700 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 0 0 false Fri May 01 18:33:29 -0700 2009 Fri May 01 18:33:29 -0700 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 4 0 false Mon Apr 20 17:39:50 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 17:39:50 -0700 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 3 0 false Thu Jan 15 18:04:59 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 15 18:04:59 -0800 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 0 0 false Sat Jan 10 19:53:18 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 19:53:18 -0800 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 0 0 false Sat Jan 10 10:58:18 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 10:58:21 -0800 2009 1254406 158243056X 9781582430560 4 0 3.56 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182281871m/1254406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1254406.The_Browser_s_Ecstasy_A_Meditation_on_Reading 4 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