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The Library Book

de Susan Orlean

Altres autors: Mira la secció altres autors.

MembresRessenyesPopularitatValoració mitjanaMencions
4,6582662,326 (4.09)237
"On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, "Once that first stack got going, it was 'Goodbye, Charlie." The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library--and, if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present--from Mary Foy; who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as "The Human Encyclopedia" who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves. Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean's thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books--and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist's reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever."--Dust jacket.… (més)
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» Mira també 237 mencions

Anglès (263)  Alemany (2)  Castellà (1)  Totes les llengües (266)
Es mostren 1-5 de 266 (següent | mostra-les totes)
I am so grateful for this book. I read only a little at a time because I wanted to savor every chapter. This has skyrocketed to one of my top ten, maybe five, favorite books of all time. ( )
  nogomu | Oct 19, 2023 |
Starting like a true crime thriller, Orlean retells the history of the Los Angeles Public Library switching between then and now. Having been in the library myself helped, but anyone interested in libraries will learn much about the development of such an important public service ( )
  betty_s | Sep 7, 2023 |
Nonfiction book on history of the Los Angeles Public Library from its early days through the big fire in 1986 which destroyed a large part of its collections, including some priceless items and how it rose phoenix-like from the ashes of the old library to become outstanding in its new incarnation. Interesting with short biographies of its various librarians, also the young man, Harry Peak, who may or may not have started the fire. The book also stresses how modern libraries have become--more than a mere depository for books. Very readable. I had a special interest in this book, as a former librarian myself. ( )
  janerawoof | Aug 28, 2023 |
The Library Book by Susan Orlean is one of the most compelling reads I’ve had in ages. The Los Angeles Downtown Central Library fire in 1986 is makes up a 1/2 of this fascinating book. Susan tracks the history of the possible arsonist brilliantly. The other 1/2 deals with the history of the Central Library from its meager beginning in the 1800’s through today. Susan lovingly writes about her love of books and libraries. There are too numerous chestnuts peppered throughout this masterpiece to include. Women weren’t allowed library cards until the 20th century. One of the head librarians made notes in books about whether they were worth reading or warning not to read the book. The calls libraries would receive asking for help is hysterical. A patron is a writer in Hebrew. He wanted to create a pun between the word for Zion and the word for penis. They couldn’t find a term for penis but the word copulate is mtsayen which helped her make her pun tsion. This is a must read. ( )
  GordonPrescottWiener | Aug 24, 2023 |
This book would fit in several genres or areas: part non-fiction account of one of the most ubiquitous institutions in the world, part autobiography, part detective story and part paean. It is delightful, filled with interesting information and a historical foundation that makes it readable & instructive. ( )
  RickGeissal | Aug 16, 2023 |
Es mostren 1-5 de 266 (següent | mostra-les totes)
On 29 April 1986 Los Angeles Central Library went up in flames. ... Susan Orlean has a knack for finding compelling stories in unlikely places. ... Orlean uses the fire to ask a broader question about just what public libraries are for and what happens when they are lost. You might not perhaps have LA pegged as the most bookish city, yet right from its inception in 1873, the central library attracted a higher proportion of citizens through its doors than anywhere else in the US. By 1921 more than a thousand books were being checked out every hour. The reason for that, Orlean suggests, is that LA has always been a city of seekers – first came the gold prospectors and the fruit growers, then the actors and the agents, and then all the refugees from the dust bowl prairies. No one was as solid or as solvent as they liked to appear, everyone was looking for clues about how to do life better.

This was where the library came in, providing the instruction manual for a million clever hacks and wheezes. In the runup to prohibition in 1920 every book on how to make homemade hooch was checked out and never returned. Five years later a man called Harry Pidgeon became only the second person to sail solo around the world, having got the design for his boat from books borrowed from the LA public library. More mundanely, the library quickly became the chief centre for free English language classes in the city, a service that it continues to provide for its huge immigrant population today.

It is this sense of a library as a civic junction that most interests Orlean. ... Or, as she puts it: "Every problem that society has, the library has, too; nothing good is kept out of the library, and nothing bad."
afegit per Cynfelyn | editaThe Guardian, Kathryn Hughs (Feb 16, 2019)
 
“The Library Book” is, in the end, a Whitmanesque yawp, bringing to life a place and an institution that represents the very best of America: capacious, chaotic, tolerant and even hopeful, with faith in mobility of every kind, even, or perhaps especially, in the face of adversity.
afegit per tim.taylor | editaThe Wall Street Journal, Jane Kamensky (Web de pagament) (Oct 11, 2018)
 

» Afegeix-hi altres autors

Nom de l'autorCàrrecTipus d'autorObra?Estat
Orlean, Susanautor primaritotes les edicionsconfirmat
André, EmeliTraductorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Loman, CarlyDissenyadorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Peters-Collaer, LaurenDissenyador de la cobertaautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Schneiter, SylvieTraductorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Trejo, JuanTraductorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Villeneuve, GuillaumeTraductorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat

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Memory believes before knowing remembers.
---William Faulkner, Light in August
And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering.
---Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
---Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers
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For Edith Orlean, my past
For Austin Gillespie, my future
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Even in Los Angeles, where there is no shortage of remarkable hairdos, Harry Peak attracted attention.
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A book feels like a thing alive in this moment, and also alive on a continuum, from the moment the thoughts about it first percolated in the writer's mind to the moment it sprang off the printing press---a lifeline that continues as someone sits with it and marvels over it, and it continues on, time after time after time.
The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten---that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappointment and aches and delights and loss, make our little mark on the world, and then we vanish, and the mark is erased, and it is as if we never existed.
Taking books away from a culture is to take away its shared memory. It's like taking away the ability to remember your dreams. Destroying a culture's books is sentencing it to something worse than death. It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived.
Pigeons the color of concrete marched in a bossy staccato around the suitcases.
There was a sense of stage business—that churn of activity you can't hear or see but you feel at a theater in the instant before the curtain rises—of people finding their places and things being set right, before the burst of action begins.
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"On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, "Once that first stack got going, it was 'Goodbye, Charlie." The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library--and, if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present--from Mary Foy; who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as "The Human Encyclopedia" who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves. Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean's thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books--and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist's reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever."--Dust jacket.

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