Acclaimed critic Sven Birkets decided to reinvest himself in the books that formed the landmarks of his inner life. In his words, Reading, the mind's traffic in signs and signifiers, is the most dynamic, changeful and possibly transformational act we can imagine.' By returning to the light-posts which marked his formative years, Birkets dissects the foundations themselves, finding strange sediments of self: of time, of memory, of the forming and ever-changing processes of intellectual life.'