THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

Encompassing nearly 2,000 years of heists and tunnel jobs, break-ins and escapes, A Burglar's Guide to the City offers an unexpected blueprint to the criminal possibilities in the world all around us. You'll never see the city the same way again. Quotes from the book:  “Architecture is the “magic of four walls,” he writes, referring to its power to fundamentally transform how certain crimes are judged and how their perpetrators can be sentenced.” “For the burglar, every building is infinite, endlessly weaving back into itself through meshed gears made of fire escapes and secondary stairways, window frames and screened-in porches, pet doors and ventilation shafts, everything interpenetrating, everything mixed together in a fantastic knot. Rooms and halls coil together like dragons inside of dragons or snakes eating their own tails, rooms opening onto every other room in the city. For the burglar, doors are everywhere. Where we see locks and alarms, they see M. C. Esc...

We are not born readers, we learn to turn words into worlds. But why is fine writing lauded while excellent reading is ignored? In The Art of Reading , philosopher Damon Young reveals the pleasures of this intimate pursuit through a rich sample of literature: from Virginia Woolf's diaries to Batman comics. He writes with honesty and humour about the blunders and revelations of his own bookish life.  Devoting each chapter to a literary virtue—curiosity, patience, courage, pride, temperance, justice— The Art of Reading celebrates the reader's power: to turn shapes on a page into a lifelong adventure. Damon Young is a prize-winning philosopher and writer. He is the author of 7 books, including How to Think About Exercise , Philosophy in the Garden and Distraction . Young is an Honorary Fellow at the  University of Melbourne. Find out more here .