Tag: library

The Library Book, Non-Fiction by Susan Orlean

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The Library Book by Susan Orlean

I read this for an Adult Book Club I’m part of at my local library. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but once I started reading, I was hooked.

The Library Book is about the Los Angeles Central Library, which I have walked past when I visited downtown LA last year, though it is not about that library, but the one which was very nearly destroyed by a fire on April 29th, 1986. Indeed, this is a book-lover’s dream book; it is about the history of the LA County Central library, the politics of the region and the immediate downtown area, the experiences of its staff, librarians, and patrons. Wrapped up into the book are issues that we face every day: sexism, homelessness, the politics of wealth and poverty.

Orleans opens with the arsonist and the investigation into the fire, which is fascinating in itself, but the book quickly branches out to discuss the rebuilding of the library, the meaning of the library to its patrons, staff, and to the community at large.

The history of the library is not the only appeal of the book. It is brilliantly written and deeply researched. Orlean writes with a keen sense of details, using them to bring what might seem to be a rather boring subject to life. Through her prose we can smell the charred incense of the library, feel the anguish of the staff, tense at the fury of the politics around the library’s governance.

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library: A Novel by Hester Fox

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The Last Heir to Blackwood Library: A Novel by Hester Fox

If you enjoy books about books, especially of the quasi-historical/paranormal/mystery/romance variety, then The Last Heir to Blackwood Library will check all your boxes. The story revolves around Ivy Radcliffe, a young woman left devastated and alone by WWI in England. She finds herself leaving the loneliness of London for Blackwood Abbey in Yorkshire — and a seat among the gentry as Lady Hayworth.

Not only must she learn to navigate her inheritance, which includes the abbey and the eponymous library, but also her new servants, the village, neighbors, and…. herself. Ivy undergoes strange changes to herself that she cannot account for, though she is amply aware of them. The oddness and feeling of foreboding is amplified by the history of the abbey and the library.

The library becomes the focal point of all the madness and Ivy realizes she must make hard choices about what she wants from her new life and what part of herself she is willing to lose to obtain that.

The appeal of this novel is not only in the mystery of Ivy’s inheritance, built into the story arc, but Fox’s ability to inject a modern feminism into Ivy’s motivations and the old-fashioned world of the English gentry in the late Edwardian/Interwar period of the mid 1920s. The result, though somewhat anachronistic, is a very contemporary and appealing leading character and an inter-generational, inter-cultural kind of tension, the kind that pits traditionalism against modern sensibilities.