Rec. #803: The Library Book

What: Talented nonfiction writer Susan Orlean spent several years in a library-related research binge sparked (ha) by the devastating 1986 fire of the Los Angeles Public Library. In The Library Book, she dips in and out of spaces and times to look at the (public) library universe from a variety of angles, including the expansive future, the character-driven past, funding (always), who even are librarians anyway, and what a book looks like when it's burning.

Any one of these topics could be (and is) enough for a book of its own, but Orlean trips across them dashingly, pinning certain ruminations in place with some particularly well-turned phrases.

Now do academic libraries, please.

Representative quote: "Destroying a library is a kind of terrorism. People think of libraries as the safest and most open places in society. Setting them on fire is like announcing that nothing, and nowhere, is safe."

Comparable to: The documentary The Great Museum takes a similarly multifaceted approach to another cultural institution -- the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Connections to previous Wreckage: The Great Museum was Rec. #763. Other excellent books by Orlean are Saturday Night (Rec. #15) and The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup (Rec. #126).